The FBI paid less than $1 million for the tool it used to hack into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, Reuters reported.
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Several US government sources told Reuters that the amount paid for the hack, bought from professional hackers, was substantially less than previous reports indicating a value over $1.3m. The bureau reportedly has control of the method used to unlock the original iPhone and can use it to access more iPhone 5c phones that run on iOS 9 without having to cut any more checks to the contractor who helped it in the first place.
In a statement Wednesday, FBI official Amy Hess said that although the FBI had purchased the method to access the phone – FBI Director James Comey suggested last week it had paid more than $1 million – the agency did not “purchase the rights to technical details about how the method functions, or the nature and extent of any vulnerability upon which the method may rely in order to operate”.
The FBI didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In his blog post, Zdziarski noted the NY case further suggests “the FBI’s unwillingness or inability to do their job, to the degree of abusing the All Writs Act as an alternative to good police work”.
As for Farook’s phone in particular, the FBI’s investigation is ongoing. “I would eat my shoe. if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone”, he said.
The FBI spent roughly a million dollars to hack into the encrypted iPhone 5C that belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, but apparently no how-to instructions were included in the deal.
The FBI is said to be most interested in finding out if Farook and wife Tashfeen Malik had any associates, and what the pair were doing during an 18-minute gap in the timeline investigators have pieced together since the shooting last December. However, the law enforcement agency has no idea how it works, according to the sources.
The White House has an interagency procedure, known as the Vulnerabilities Equities Process, for reviewing technology security flaws and deciding which ones should be made public.
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But the FBI’s process has remained shrouded in mystery.
