The true story of how the FBI cracked the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone

Apple and the FBI were engaged in a massive fight over encryption in the early part of 2016, following the December 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino. A husband and wife shot and killed more than a dozen people, and then they died in the ensuing fight with the police. They left behind an iPhone 5C running iOS 9, the latest operating system available for iPhone and iPad at the time. The government wanted to gain access to the phone to see if it could determine any links between the two shooters and the Islamic State, but they could not break the encryption. The FBI attempted to have a court force Apple to create a backdoor in iOS that would allow them to retrieve whatever data sat behind the screen’s password. Apple fiercely opposed that order, explaining that it doesn’t have a backdoor into iOS, and creating one would be a massive security risk for all iPhone users.

In the months that followed, the FBI admitted to finding a solution to hack the iPhone 5C’s encryption and backed away from the case. Apple won the argument over encryption back then, but governments worldwide have been trying to push backdoor legislation ever since. The FBI later confirmed it paid $900,000 for the exploit that allowed it to get into the iPhone, but didn't disclose how the exploit worked. The FBI did not find any helpful information on the iPhone 5C belonging to the shooters after unlocking it. Experts in the field believed Israeli firm Cellebrite came up with the hack, but that was never confirmed. It seemed we’d never learn the truth, but a new report might finally reveal the true story of how the FBI broke the iPhone’s encryption.