FBI facing demands to share its claimed technique to unlock iPhones

theguardian.com

Any day now, Hillar Moore is expecting a call from the FBI.

Moore, a district attorney in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has publicly lamented that Apple’s iPhone encryption is keeping local police out of a victim’s phone in arecent murder. On Monday, Moore’s ears perked up when the FBI announced it would drop its court battle with Apple after it figured out a way to pull data from the iPhone of Syed Farook, the San Bernardino gunman. 

Moore, like many others, wants in.

“Waiting on them to call me,” he wrote in an email exchange with the Guardian, “to see if they can assist in getting into my phone.”

The FBI now faces a series of tough questions after it announced to the world that it has a technique for hacking into Farook’s iPhone – something Apple says shouldn’t be possible on current models without a user’s passcode. Naturally, a lot of other people – from local police to parents – say they could benefit from the technology.

The technique is a closely guarded secret at FBI headquarters. It probably relies on a security flaw in Apple’s mobile operating system. Because of that, the bureau realizes that the more widely it’s shared, the more likely Apple could learn about the technique and patch it.