US uses mystery technique to crack gunman’s encrypted iPhone without Apple’s help

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The US government had been locked in a high-stakes battle with Apple over demands that the tech firm unlock a terrorist gunman’s iPhone. But a mysterious technique has allowed investigators to sidestep Apple and break into the phone using a mysterious technique. Photo: AP

Published: 7:26am, 29 Mar 2016Updated: 12:05pm, 29 Mar 2016

The US Justice Department said on Monday it had succeeded in unlocking an iPhone used by a terrorist gunman and dropped its legal case against Apple, ending a high-stakes legal battle but leaving the broader struggle over encryption unresolved.

The abrupt end to a confrontation that had transfixed the tech industry was a victory for Apple, which vehemently opposed a court order obtained by the Justice Department that would have required it to write new software to get into the iPhone. But it lost bragging right over the security of the device.

“From the beginning, we objected to the FBI’s demand that Apple build a back door into the iPhone because we believed it was wrong and would set a dangerous precedent,” Apple said in a statement late on Monday. “As a result of the government’s dismissal, neither of these occurred. This case should never have been brought.”

Rizwan Farook (right) and wife Tashfeen Malik, the San Bernardino terrorist couple who killed 14 people last December before dying in a police shootout. Farook’s iPhone has been at the heart of a protracted struggle between US authorities and Apple. Photo: EPA

But the larger fight over law enforcement access to encrypted information is by no means over. The technology industry is adamant that anything that helps authorities bypass the security features of tech products will undermine security for everyone.

Government officials are equally insistent that all manner of criminal investigations will be crippled without access to phone data.

At issue in the case was a county-owned iPhone used by Rizwan Farook, one of the husband-and-wife shooters in the December rampage in San Bernardino, California, in which 14 people were killed and 22 wounded. The couple died in a shootout with police after the attack.