Last year, Apple was criticized by users, refusing to give US authorities access to data stored in the iPhone shooter from San Bernardino. American intelligence agencies were forced to turn to the Israeli company Cellebrite, which specializiruetsya on developing software and hardware to extract data from mobile devices.
But first, the FBI sought from Apple access the blocked content on the iPhone terrorist. Then the security services applied to the Ministry of justice, and they filed a lawsuit demanding that the company created a special software tool that would allow to access phone data without password.
The situation escalated so much that Apple CEO Tim cook wrote a special message to users of the company’s products, which he justified his refusal in General terms that terrorism should be fought, but user rights above all else. And what if the hacking tool for iPhone is created, it will mean the possibility of creating and then nobody will give guarantees that such a tool is not created by someone else. Maya Cosos of Vanity Fair believes that Tim cook ended up right.
“Now, as we can see, cook was right, I was worried about the safety of iPhone users. According to the publication Motherboard, Cellebrite was hacked and its data, including highly confidential information of customers, database and technical details about the products Cellebrite – was stolen,” – says the journalists.
According to network sources, the attacker stole 900 GB of data Cellebrite. The dump contains information about the clients associated with the company products, technical information, databases, and messages from government organizations of different countries, including Russia, UAE and Turkey. In addition, there is information with some jailbroken phones and logs authorization of Cellebrite devices.
This case clearly showed that the victims of criminals become even professional hackers. If Apple gave the authorities a tool to access the iPhone and iPad, there would be no question about how could the attackers to access the vulnerability – would be the question of when this happened.
This is not the first case when victims of burglary become professional hackers. Suffice it to recall the incident with the Hacking Team: in 2015 the company that sells a spyware software and tools to hack the security services and police worldwide, has suffered from hacking and large-scale data breaches. Then the company stole more than 400 GB of data containing information on the activities of the company, the Hacking Team clients and the source codes of certain products.
As we can see now, the history of Apple and the FBI all ended well: the company refused to cooperate with the secret police, betrayed the trust of its customers. Secret services have used the services of consultants, they did not have to engage a private person to cooperate in the case of terrorism. Cellebrite also earned itself excellent advertising.
But, as always, there are the injured party: is the us government, which has failed to impose its will on the Silicon valley. Although there are suspicions that in the history of politics have more weight than the investigation. Because the war between Apple and the FBI are still not finished.
