Sources: Australian company Azimuth unlocked San Bernardino shooter's iPhone for FBI, using a flaw in Mozilla's open source code used for lightning accessories
Azimuth unlocked the iPhone at the center of an epic legal battle between the FBI and Apple. Now, Apple is suing the company co-founded …
Washington Post
Context & Ripple Effects
The 2016 standoff over the San Bernardino iPhone ended not in court but with the DoJ withdrawing its case against Apple once a third party proved it could get in — and reporting at the time pointed to Israel's Cellebrite as the FBI's partner. Five years on, the vendor has a name: Australia's Azimuth, which sources say exploited a flaw in Mozilla's open-source code used for Lightning accessories.
That detail matters because Apple's refusal to build a backdoor — the position it had held since the iOS 8 encryption fight — was only ever as strong as its weakest dependency. The company is now suing Azimuth, converting a dormant legal battle into a direct attack on the exploit-vendor ecosystem.
First-order effects
Apple's lawsuit puts Azimuth, a previously unnamed contractor in the case, on the legal defensive over both the unlock and its use of the underlying code.
Second-order effects
The FOIA suit by AP, Vice Media, and Gannett demanding disclosure of the FBI's method gains a concrete target now that the vendor and technique are identified, pressuring the agency to justify continued secrecy.
Mozilla's open-source code becoming the entry point forces every vendor whose software touches Apple's accessory ecosystem to audit dependencies they never considered attack surface.
Third-order effects
The pattern that emerges — agencies buying unlocks from private firms instead of compelling them from Apple — sidesteps the court precedent the San Bernardino case was meant to set, leaving the legal limits of compelled decryption unresolved while the technical arms race continues.
The trend: Law enforcement is increasingly meeting strong device encryption through private exploit vendors rather than courtroom compulsion, pushing the encryption fight from the courts into the supply chain.
Here's an ironic twist: A month or two after the FBI unlocked the terrorist's iPhone, Mozilla discovered the flaw in its software and patched it in a routine update. So did vendors that relied on the software, including Apple. The exploit was rendered useless.
A cyber cold case, finally solved. And what a kicker: “A month or two after the FBI unlocked the terrorist's iPhone, Mozilla discovered the flaw in its software and patched it in a routine update ... The exploit was rendered useless.” https://twitter.com/...
Oh wow. We finally know who unlocked an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, solving a years-long mystery: A small Australian hacking firm. (They found a way in that was rendered useless not long after unlocking the phone.) https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Mark Dowd's Australian firm Azimuth was on the top of everyone's guess list as the secret company that helped the FBI unlock the San Bernardino iPhone in 2016, but no one could ever confirm it. Now @nakashimae has finally done that. Great job, Ellen. https://www.washingtonpost.co…
The real question I have is why this is all leaking out now. I can't imagine the FBI is happy. The piece doesn't answer the question but it hints towards the Apple/Corellium lawsuit. https://twitter.com/...
The exploit chain seems to have used a flaw in Mozilla code used in the iPod Accessory Protocol (presumably Mozilla NSS) as an entry point. Yuck. https://twitter.com/...
Five years ago, The FBI paid about $1 million to a mystery firm to unlock an iPhone belonging to a terrorist in the San Bernardino attacks. @nakashimae and I got the details on the name of the company, and the hackers who did it. Here's how it went down. https://www.washingtonpos…
Interesting story about what really happened with the Apple v. FBI case: Mark Dowd's Azimuth was the one to get the San Bernardino iPhone unlocked. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...