There are now two separate companies that offer Apple iPhone cracking technology in the wake of the San Bernadino mass shooting.
On December 2, 2015, a mass shooting broke out in San Bernadino, California that had the Federal Beaureu of Investigation scrambling to unlock the terrorist’s iPhone. Unable to get past the passcode and content-wiping security measures programmed on the phone, the FBI looked to Apple for assistance.
The Bureau wanted the tech giant to give them specialty software that would enable them to unlock the iPhone without damaging any of its content. Apple declined, despite the FBI’s court order, and took the case public.
Law enforcement argued that the progressive advancement of mobile security was beginning to make devices immune to the warrants of investigations. Apple contested that creating such an encryption-hacking device would ultimately create a “master key and would encourage other countries, like China or Russia, to make similar demands for other iPhones,” according to an NPR article.
The heated debate over who holds the moral high-ground faded away after the FBI attained the help of a third-party to assist in unlocking the device, without help from Apple.
Since then, the conversation about phone security in the eyes of law enforcement has been relatively subdued, until now.
Back in February, it was rumored that a technology vendor based out of Israel, called Cellebrite, created a way to unlock iPhones running iOS 11 and began marketing the product to U.S. law enforcement, and was being tested by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
After the emergence of Cellebrite, a second company came to light as another vendor who also provided iPhone de-encryption technology. Grayshift had apparently created a low-cost black box, named GrayKey, that enables users to get past an iPhone’s security measures. Motherboard states that many local and federal law enforcement agencies are purchasing the key to access secure iPhones.
Roughly 50% of people with cellphones use them as their primary internet source, which means that large quantities of data can be pulled if one were to be hacked or bypassed.
With this new technology, it won’t just be national law enforcement that can bypass Apple iPhone security. Soon, governments around the world will be able to gain access to various data pulled from encrypted devices (if not already).