Lord777
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The iPhone of the terrorist who staged a shooting in San Bernardino (California, USA) in December 2015, became the cornerstone in the confrontation between the FBI and Apple. The technology company refused to help law enforcement agencies unlock the device, citing the protection of the privacy of its users. According to Apple, having unlocked one iPhone at the request of the authorities, it will eventually have to do this all the time, which goes against its position regarding the data of its users. As a result, the FBI received help from a third-party company whose name has not been disclosed for five years. Even Apple didn't know who had helped the FBI.
According to The Washington Post, a small Australian company Azimuth Security helped the authorities extract data from the terrorist's iPhone . The company tries not to "shine" and assures that it sells its hacking tools only to the governments of democratic countries.
The San Bernardino shooter's iPhone was unlocked by two security researchers from Azimuth Security. The first of them is the company's founder, former IBM X-Force researcher, 41-year-old Australian hacker and marathon runner Mark Dowd. According to his colleagues, in order to hack a computer, Daoud only needs to look at it. He was even called the "Mozart of Exploits". The second researcher is a former student at Yale University, David Wang, who at the age of 27 received the Pwnie Award (a kind of "Oscar" in the hacker world) for jailbreaking the iPhone.
Even before the San Bernardino terrorist attack, Dowd discovered a vulnerability in Mozilla's open source code that Apple used to allow accessories to connect to the iPhone via the Lightning port. However, at that time, Azimuth Security was busy with other projects, and the development of the exploit was not a priority for it.
Two months after the terrorist attack, speaking before the US Congress, FBI Director James Comey said that the bureau is still unable to unlock the smartphone, which can store the necessary data for the investigation. Daud then considered offering to help the authorities. Around this time, he was contacted by an FBI representative, and the researcher contacted Wang.
Using the vulnerability discovered by Dowd, Wang developed an exploit that allows you to gain initial access to the iPhone. Then he tied it to another exploit that provided more maneuverability. Next, Wang added the latest exploit to the chain, which was previously created for the iPhone by another Azimuth Security researcher. This gave him the ability to gain full control over the phone's central processing unit. Wang wrote software that quickly tried all access code combinations, bypassing security features.
Wang and Dowd tested their exploit (Wang called it Condor) on dozens of iPhone 5Cs, and it worked perfectly. In mid-March 2016, the researchers demonstrated their solution at the FBI headquarters, showing Comey and other executives how Condor could unlock the iPhone 5C. The FBI laboratory conducted a series of successful tests to verify the effectiveness of the exploit.
According to some experts, by hacking the terrorist's smartphone for the FBI, Azimuth Security researchers actually rendered Apple a huge service, because otherwise everything could have ended up with the court obliging it to implement backdoors in its products.
According to sources in The Washington Post, having obtained the exploit, the FBI staff was relieved, but also somewhat disappointed. They understood that otherwise, the court could once and for all bring legal clarity to the long-running debate over whether the government can force a company to crack its own encryption in order to enforce the law.
According to The Washington Post, a small Australian company Azimuth Security helped the authorities extract data from the terrorist's iPhone . The company tries not to "shine" and assures that it sells its hacking tools only to the governments of democratic countries.
The San Bernardino shooter's iPhone was unlocked by two security researchers from Azimuth Security. The first of them is the company's founder, former IBM X-Force researcher, 41-year-old Australian hacker and marathon runner Mark Dowd. According to his colleagues, in order to hack a computer, Daoud only needs to look at it. He was even called the "Mozart of Exploits". The second researcher is a former student at Yale University, David Wang, who at the age of 27 received the Pwnie Award (a kind of "Oscar" in the hacker world) for jailbreaking the iPhone.
Even before the San Bernardino terrorist attack, Dowd discovered a vulnerability in Mozilla's open source code that Apple used to allow accessories to connect to the iPhone via the Lightning port. However, at that time, Azimuth Security was busy with other projects, and the development of the exploit was not a priority for it.
Two months after the terrorist attack, speaking before the US Congress, FBI Director James Comey said that the bureau is still unable to unlock the smartphone, which can store the necessary data for the investigation. Daud then considered offering to help the authorities. Around this time, he was contacted by an FBI representative, and the researcher contacted Wang.
Using the vulnerability discovered by Dowd, Wang developed an exploit that allows you to gain initial access to the iPhone. Then he tied it to another exploit that provided more maneuverability. Next, Wang added the latest exploit to the chain, which was previously created for the iPhone by another Azimuth Security researcher. This gave him the ability to gain full control over the phone's central processing unit. Wang wrote software that quickly tried all access code combinations, bypassing security features.
Wang and Dowd tested their exploit (Wang called it Condor) on dozens of iPhone 5Cs, and it worked perfectly. In mid-March 2016, the researchers demonstrated their solution at the FBI headquarters, showing Comey and other executives how Condor could unlock the iPhone 5C. The FBI laboratory conducted a series of successful tests to verify the effectiveness of the exploit.
According to some experts, by hacking the terrorist's smartphone for the FBI, Azimuth Security researchers actually rendered Apple a huge service, because otherwise everything could have ended up with the court obliging it to implement backdoors in its products.
According to sources in The Washington Post, having obtained the exploit, the FBI staff was relieved, but also somewhat disappointed. They understood that otherwise, the court could once and for all bring legal clarity to the long-running debate over whether the government can force a company to crack its own encryption in order to enforce the law.
