Why the FBI's alternative method to unlock iPhone may involve NAND mirroring by an external forensics firm to enable brute force guessing of shooter's PIN
Report Danny Yadron / Guardian : Government keeping its method to crack San Bernardino iPhone ‘classified’ Chris Strohm / Bloomberg Business : Thank You for Hacking IPhone, Now Tell Apple How You Did It Stephen Schenck / Pocketnow : Who's helping the FBI access that locked iPhone - without Apple's assistance? Rajesh Pandey / iPhone Hacks : Israeli Firm Cellebrite Reportedly Helping the FBI in Unlocking San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone Jenn Gidman / Newser : Apple Doesn't Pay Hackers, So Hackers Help FBI: Experts David Bolton / ARC : The Presence: Virtual Reality Is The Last True Medium Jeff John Roberts / Fortune : Why Apple Won Round 1 vs. the FBI, and What Comes Next Wall Street Journal : Apple Win in iPhone Case Comes With Cost István Fekete / iPhone in Canada Blog : Israeli Forensic Firm Cellebrite Said to Be Helping FBI Crack Shooter's iPhone Charlesarthur / The Overspill : Start up: the ad deception, why your Wi-Fi is lousy, will Android OEMs follow the iPhone SE?, and more Laura Hautala / CNET : How the hell could the FBI hack into that iPhone? Joshua Kopstein / Motherboard : Here's How the FBI Might Unlock the San Bernardino iPhone Without Apple's Help emptywheel : DOJ's Pre-Ass-Handing Capitulation Orin Kerr / Washington Post : Hearing postponed in the San Bernardino Apple v. FBI case Associated Press : The Latest: FBI Official Says ‘Good Shot’ at Unlocking Phone Rob Price / Tech Insider : This might be how the FBI is planning to break into an iPhone without Apple's help (AAPL) Shaun Nichols / The Register : FBI backs down against Apple: Feds may be able to crack killer's iPhone without iGiant's help Kate Knibbs / Gizmodo : 4 Theories About How the FBI Is Cracking the San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone Tweets: Ranvir Singh / @ranvir01 : They've always known how to do it - FBI just wanted Apple to to do it to set a precedent and save them time and $ http://twitter.com/... Future Ex-Pat / @grahamvsworld : lotta good points here http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p= 5966 but also a lot of assumptions about speedy DOJ decision processes that aren't justified Matthew Green / @matthew_d_green : Jonathan Zdiarski's take on how Apple is probably accessing the iPhone. Almost certainly correct. http://www.zdziarski.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The San Bernardino standoff had escalated quickly: after Apple publicly refused a court order it called a backdoor and filed a motion to dismiss citing free speech rights, the government pivoted from compelling Apple to finding someone else who could get in. Reports now point to Israeli forensics firm Cellebrite using NAND mirroring to defeat the auto-erase counter and brute-force the PIN — a route the ACLU had already sketched as feasible without Apple's help.
The significance is that the constitutional fight may be mooted by procurement rather than litigation: if an outside firm cracks the phone, the government gets what it wanted while keeping the method classified, leaving Apple unable to patch the vulnerability that was used.
First-order effects
- The FBI gains access to the shooter's iPhone without Apple's assistance, and the DoJ withdraws its legal action once the method proves successful — ending the courtroom confrontation on the government's terms rather than through a ruling either side could appeal.
Second-order effects
- Apple is left holding an unpatchable problem: because the method stays classified, it cannot learn which weakness Cellebrite exploited, so every iPhone with the same hardware remains exposed to the same technique.
- Third-party forensics firms like Cellebrite become the de facto suppliers of lawful-access capability, creating a commercial market where governments buy unlocks instead of compelling vendors to build them.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the encryption debate shifts from 'should companies be forced to backdoor their products' to 'how should exploit sales to governments be governed' — a market operating outside any vendor's knowledge or oversight.
- Apple's likely response is hardware hardening against exactly this class of attack, but the gap persists: a year later FBI Director Christopher Wray disclosed agents were still locked out of over half the mobile devices they tried to access, showing vendor-independent unlocking scales poorly.
The trend: Law enforcement is shifting from litigating to compel vendors into building backdoors toward purchasing unlock capabilities from third-party forensics firms, with classified methods replacing public legal precedent.