FBI Paid Professional Hackers One-Time Fee To Crack iPhone

News has come to light in the last 24 hours that the FBI might not have gone to Israeli company Cellebrite to assist in cracking the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter. Instead, The Washington Post is claiming that FBI did not require Cellebrite’s assistance in hacking San Bernardino iPhone. Instead, the report claims, the government intelligence organization bought a previously unknown security bug from a group of professional hackers. According to the report, the hacker group provided FBI with at least one zero-day flaw in the iPhone 5c’s security, which enabled FBI to circumvent the lockscreen and other security features. The bug hasn’t been disclosed to anyone. But you can bet a lot of people including Apple are trying to find out. It is worth noting that whatever this bug is, it isn’t present on the iPhone 5S or higher likely for reasons explained in this post from last week.

If we see a iOS update from Apple with really vague release notes in the next week or two, you now know why.

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