Skip to main content

Cellebrite may be third party offering to crack San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone

After the showdown between Apple and the FBI was resulted in a postponement, there was a scramble to find out which “third party” was offering the government a way to crack the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone — and according to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, it’s Israeli firm Cellebrite.

On March 21, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym had a conference call with Apple’s lawyers and representatives for the United States. The conversation involved Apple trying to convince the judge to vacate the court order that compelled it to offer a backdoor into the iPhone of the shooter that killed 14 people in San Bernardino last December. The FBI moved to postpone the hearing after it learned of another possible way to get into the iPhone without Apple’s help at all.

Recommended Videos

“There have been a lot of people who have reached out to us during this litigation with proposed alternate methods, and one by one they have failed for one reason or the other,” said Tracy Wilkinson, a representative for the U.S. “And we haven’t, you know, — there’s just no reason to go into those. But at this point we have, at least, a good faith basis that it will work. The problem is we don’t know for sure.”

As the FBI isn’t 100 percent sure the method, reportedly proposed by Cellebrite, will work, it requested that the court postpone the hearing. The judge agreed and requested a status update from the FBI on April 5 — giving the FBI ample time to test the alternate method.

The Cupertino company contended that the government’s argument was based on its assertion that it had “explored other means … [and] had been unable to identify any other methods feasible for gaining access.” Since the FBI now says they have an alternate method, Apple contends that the court should vacate the order since there’s no “good cause” anymore. But the court sided with the FBI.

Cellebrite has been working with “intelligence, defense, and law enforcement” for many years, according to Yedioth Ahronoth, which cited anonymous industry officials. The newspaper reports that the company began providing decryption technology to the FBI after it signed a contract in 2013.

The company decrypts information from mobile devices for criminal and intelligence investigations, according to its website. Cellebrite said they were unable to provide comment.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Julian Chokkattu
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Julian is the mobile and wearables editor at Digital Trends, covering smartphones, fitness trackers, smartwatches, and more…
Screenshot-reading malware cracks iPhone security for the first time
A person holding an iPhone in their hand.

In the realm of smartphones, Apple’s ecosystem is deemed to be the safer one. Independent analysis by security experts has also proved that point repeatedly over the years. But Apple’s guardrails are not impenetrable. On the contrary, it seems bad actors have managed yet another worrying breakthrough.

As per an analysis by Kaspersky, malware with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities has been spotted on the App Store for the first time. Instead of stealing files stored on a phone, the malware scanned screenshots stored locally, analyzed the text content, and relayed the necessary information to servers.

Read more
The iPhone 17 may get one of the biggest design changes in five years
An image of the back of an iPhone 16.

The iPhone has had a distinctive look since its initial release in 2007. Sure, the sizes have changed, as have materials, but you can generally glance at an iPhone of any generation and say, "Yeah, that's an iPhone." Now, a rumor suggests that the iPhone 17 could draw inspiration from its predecessors and bring back the curved edges that have appeared several times throughout the generations.

Leaker Fixed-Focus Digital shared on Weibo (a Chinese social media platform) that the iPhone 17 would reintroduce the rounded sides of the first few iPhones, doing away with the straight edges current models have. Some fans find the straight sides less comfortable to hold, although a case can make a big difference in how the phone feels in your hand. Fixed-Focus Digital doesn't share further details, but Apple tends to differentiate its premium lineup from the base models. The design change could apply only to the base versions of the iPhone 17, to only the Pro and Pro Max versions, or to every version.

Read more
The next iPhone SE may get a surprising name change
iPhone SE (2022) held in a mans hand.

The iPhone SE 4 is the long-awaited next entry in the iPhone SE lineup. Information about the device has been scarce, with only a few bits of information leaking out here and there, but now there's a newer, more surprising rumor: that the name of the next iPhone SE might actually be the iPhone 16E.

The news first broke in mid-December from a source that's relatively unknown in the U.S. and was limited to just Weibo. Now, Majin Bu, a tipster with a much more solid track record, shared a post on X recently that supports the news.

Read more