FBI paid professional hackers one-time fee to crack San Bernardino iPhone

The FBI cracked a San Bernardino (CA) terrorist’s phone with the help of professional hackers who discovered and brought to the bureau at least one previously unknown software flaw, apparently. The new information was then used to create a piece of hardware that helped the FBI to crack the iPhone’s four-digit personal identification number without triggering a security feature that would have erased all the data.

The researchers, who typically keep a low profile, specialize in hunting for vulnerabilities in software and then in some cases selling them to the US government. They were paid a one-time flat fee for the solution. Cracking the four-digit PIN, which the FBI had estimated would take 26 minutes, was not the hard part for the bureau. The challenge from the beginning was disabling a feature on the phone that wipes data stored on the device after 10 incorrect tries at guessing the code. A second feature also steadily increases the time allowed between attempts. The bureau in this case did not need the services of the Israeli firm Cellebrite, as some earlier reports had suggested, apparently. The US government now has to weigh whether to disclose the flaws to Apple, a decision that probably will be made by a White House-led group.