Sources: FBI worked with Israel's Cellebrite to crack the iPhone in the San Bernardino shooting case
FBI Worked With Israel's Cellebrite to Crack iPhone — The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation worked with Israel's Cellebrite Mobile Synchronization Ltd. to crack the iPhone used …
Context & Ripple Effects
This report lands mid-crisis for the FBI, which needed a way into the San Bernardino shooter's locked iPhone and had turned to outside help. Within days of the Cellebrite story, the bureau was telling local law enforcement it would assist with their own phone unlocks (offering local agencies unlocking help) — signaling the technique was meant to scale beyond one case.
Attribution then churned for weeks: the Washington Post reported the FBI did not use Cellebrite but paid hackers for an undisclosed software flaw (crediting paid hackers instead), Reuters put the price under $1M for a method reusable on any iPhone 5c running iOS 9 (a reusable sub-$1M technique), then revised the admitted total past $1.3M. Five years on, Australian firm Azimuth was named as the actual unlocker.
First-order effects
- The FBI obtains a working unlock for the San Bernardino iPhone through an outside vendor rather than the device maker, and immediately extends the capability to state and local agencies.
- Cellebrite is thrust into the center of the most-watched encryption case in the country, gaining — fairly or not — a public reputation as the FBI's phone-breaking supplier.
Second-order effects
- Competing source reports force the FBI to disclose what it pays for intrusion work, turning exploit procurement into a visible market with a public price point above $1.3M per technique.
- Because the purchased method works on any iPhone 5c running iOS 9 without additional payment, every agency the FBI assists inherits a reusable unlock, spreading the capability across thousands of local departments.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, phone decryption consolidates around a standing gray market of specialist vendors — Cellebrite, then Azimuth — rather than cooperation from device makers, making vendor identity and payment disclosure recurring news beats.
- A seven-figure price floor for a single reusable unlock establishes what governments will pay for device exploits, structurally separating law-enforcement access from consumer device security.
The trend: Law enforcement is building a commercial gray market for phone-decryption exploits, substituting paid third-party vendors for cooperation from device makers.