Apple Ordered to Help FBI Recover Data From San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone 5c
A U.S. Federal judge today ordered Apple to help federal investigators access data on the iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, reports NBC News. According to court papers, Apple "declined to provide [assistance] voluntarily."

The judge ruled Tuesday that the Cupertino-based company had to provide "reasonable technical assistance" to the government in recovering data from the iPhone 5c, including bypassing the auto-erase function and allowing investigators to submit an unlimited number of passwords in their attempts to unlock the phone. Apple has five days to respond to the court if it believes that compliance would be "unreasonably burdensome."
Prosecutors argued that despite providing a warrant authorizing the search of Farook's device, the "government was unable to complete the search because it cannot access the iPhone's encrypted content." The FBI argued that Apple has the "technical means" to assist the government and, in a statement, U.S. attorney Eileen M. Decker said that the order was a "potentially important step" in finding out "everything we possibly can" about the San Bernardino attack.
Authorities said they were able to access several backups of Farook's iCloud data, which were saved a month before the attack took place. Prosecutors argued that the evidence in his iCloud account indicated he was in communication with both his victims and his wife, who assisted him in the attack. They allege he may have disabled iCloud data saves after that point to hide further potential evidence.
Last October, the Cupertino company reiterated that it "would be impossible" for the company to access data on a device using iOS 8 or later, but federal authorities are asking Apple to disable a feature that erases the iPhone's data after a certain number of failed password attempts. It's not clear if Apple is able to do so.
Apple stopped storing encryption keys after the release of iOS 8, making it impossible for the company to bypass passcodes to gain access to a device. Additionally, Apple CEO Tim Cook has consistently insisted that providing back-door access past its encryption for authorities would open the door for "bad guys" to gain access to its users' data.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Popular Stories
Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users by tracking push notifications that move through Google's and Apple's servers, a US senator warned on Wednesday (via Reuters). In a letter to the Department of Justice, Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data from the tech giants to track smartphones. The traffic flowing from apps that send push notifications...
Best Buy's month-long holiday sale continues this weekend with multiple all-time low prices on Apple's line of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air computers. In addition to Apple notebooks, Best Buy's event has discounts sitewide on home appliances, TVs, video games, and more. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive...
iOS 17.2 has been in beta testing for over a month, and it should be released to all users in a few more weeks. The software update includes many new features and changes for iPhones, including the dozen that we have highlighted below. iOS 17.2 is expected to be released to the public in mid-December. To learn about even more features coming in the update, check out our full list. Journal ...
Apple appears to have closed the loophole that Beeper Mini used to bring iMessage to Android, putting a stop to blue bubbles from Android devices. Beeper Mini quit working earlier today, with users receiving "failed to lookup on server: lookup request timed out" error messages. Beeper said on Twitter that it is investigating the issue, but Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky told TechCrunch that "all ...
Amazon has a few big discounts on Apple Watch today, headlined by a new all-time low price on the Apple Watch Ultra 2. Many of these watches can be delivered by Christmas, with delivery dates around the middle of next week for most models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site ...
Apple's iPhone 15 lineup came out in September, and while most reviews are done shortly after a new device launches, we like to follow up with a longer term review that gives us an opportunity to provide a deeper dive into what it's like using these phones on a day to day basis for months. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. MacRumors videographer Dan Barbera has been...
Recently, MacRumors has received details on the battery currently being tested on the upcoming fourth-generation iPhone SE, and the information corroborates previous findings in relation to the device. The iPhone SE 4, known by its device identifier D59, is expected to use the exact same battery found in the base model iPhone 14. Partially assembled prototypes of the next iPhone SE have been ...
Apple made the first beta of iOS 17.2 available to developers in October. Since then we've seen three more betas, and with each iteration Apple continues to add more new features and changes, many of which users have been anticipating for quite a while. Below, we've listed 35 new things that are coming to your iPhone when the finalized version is publicly released in mid-December. 1....
Top Rated Comments
But running all of the combinations on the phone itself, can take over 5 years for a six-digit lower-case password mixing numbers and letters.
So the FBI will need brute force it on a supercomputer, but that would require the hardware key, which is built into the phone. Apple does not know the hardware key. The FBI would have to extract the key by melting the plastic off the chip and hitting it with bursts of lasers to hopefully recover bits of the key.
With a supercomputer, the FBI could crack a simple six-digit numeric code in about 22 hours, but a complex alpha-numeric password could take over 10 years.