A third-party, not the FBI, was able to break Apple’s security. I’m sure the third-party will be willing to sell their app/software/technical secret(s) to Apple for 50+ million dollars. Or sell it to a competitor.
Apple didn’t want to cooperate with the federal government over a terrorist issue. Do they now believe that the FBI should hand over a 3rd party’s hack, which the FBI may not have, so Apple can profit from having a more secure system?
To be clear, Apple themselves have not asked the FBI for the method used.
Not as far as I know. This is just a speculation threat on whether the government should tell Apple how it was done.
Assuming the third party exists, I wonder if the FBI did a non disclosure agreement.
I strongly support Apple not helping the Government. I strongly support the Government keeping fix to themselves.
Apple did not want to help the FBI break into the phone because they were afraid that the technique would somehow get out and then all iPhones would be compromised.
The FBI has broken into the phone and now Apple wants them to share the technique?
Not gonna happen.
That’s how I understood it. They just didn’t want to share that info with Uncle Sam.
Yes, they (FBI) should share the info with Apple anyway. Though neither party should have any expectations.
It seems that according to Apple’s logic (in which breaking into a phone would be the opening of Pandora’s box that results in the hack being used by millions of evil people, whose only goal is to see hellfire raining down upon our entire economy because nothing digital can ever be made secure again) the fact that the phone was broken into without Apple’s help means that we should all be investing in bullets and MREs.
Because this technique will soon be in everyone’s hands (China!!! Iran!!! Radical Muslim extremists!!! Cyber identity theft spies, digital abortionists, and many other scary terms!!!) and civilization, which we all know was invented in Silicon Valley, is about to end.
They have a moral obligation, both to Apple and its customers. They probably don’t have a legal obligation.
And I’d say celebrating the insecurities of your own citizen’s technology is ass-backwards for a government agency, but it’s been SOP for the NSA and FBI for a long time, so it doesn’t surprise me. Could you imagine the FBI (or its predecessor) proudly proclaiming to the world how poor Model Ts perform, after they just got done telling Henry Ford he was helping the gangsters by making it harder for cops to catch them on horseback?
Good point. If the notoriously close-mouthed Apple asks for the method, they are being hypocrites.
There was an article in the Times about how unlike companies such as Google, Apple does not offer a bug bounty, where they pay for people who find security holes and such. It seems they think they are so smart that no one can find holes before they do.
Oops.
Apple is big on the ‘if it’s not invented here we don’t need or want it’ mindset. It always amuses me when people gush about how open and free Apple is and boo at Microsoft as the Evil Empire, when the reality is so different than people’s perceptions (that being that they really aren’t all that different, and in fact Microsoft, while definitely evil, at least works with other companies and has a fairly open system and architecture).
Whatever technique was used, it pretty much certainly depended on having physical possession of the phone. Cook’s contention that millions and millions of people are at risk is bullshit.
Remember, by the way, that this phone was owned by the county, not the terrorist, and the county approved the government getting in. This is not like the big bad government spying on you - it is more like someone forgetting his password, going the the Genius Bar, and being told “tough luck, chump. We have to protect security, you know.”
Open and free? Hah! I know a guy in my field who was always one of the people who gave talks and asked questions at conferences. Then he moved to Apple - and have been totally muzzled. They do the stuff I do, but they have never, ever reported on it, even for old product. Intel people are chatterboxes by comparison.
This is exactly why I do not and will know buy any Apple products.
And based on the number of bricked phones we have here in our office, that’s exactly what they will tell you. 
They are nothing if not consistent. Of course, contrary to the common narrative about Apple, what it REALLY means is…we had to go out and buy new phones when one was bricked (at least until we finally got some working MDM software that lets us get around the issue). Which doesn’t help with the bricked phones, of course, but should allow us to not have this happen as much in the future.
The “third party” could easily be the NSA, or some other spook agency. That’s what we pay them for, right? If the FBI can’t get the NSA to hack the phone of a terrorist for them, what’s the point of the NSA?
The government is under no obligation to tell Apple how they did it, and this would be true even if Apple had cooperated. However, even without any obligation, I think it would be in the government’s best interests to tell. Government agents use iPhones too, and they don’t want anyone else breaking into their phones. That means that they want this security hole closed, and the people most qualified to close it are those working at Apple.
The point is that there is a zero day exploit of iOS that Apple’s customers depend on them to fix. I don’t have a problem with the government opening this particular phone, I have a problem with weakening the security of widely used personal devices.
It’s pretty shitty to hold Apple customers hostage because the FBI is angry at Tim Cook. They should do the right thing by the citizens who employ them and tell Apple what security hole they used so that Apple can fix it. But they won’t, because our intelligence agencies are anti-American. The American people are their enemies, and withholding important security information from an American company that protects millions of Americans’ personal data proves it.
It is pretty widely believed that government agencies don’t do anything to fix security holes because they like those security holes, it makes it easier to hack anyone you want to hack.
The problem is that government officials use stuff too. It’s all great when you’re intercepting Angela Merkel’s phone conversations, not so great when the Russians are reading Secretary Clinton’s email.
This is just hyperbolic. Who do you think works for the intelligence agencies? I know the big-bad American government trope is a popular one, but do you really think the intelligence agencies see the “American people as their enemies?” Who do you think the people who work at these agencies are? Hollywood notwithstanding, the people who work in the FBI and the DOJ are normal Americans who care more about mundane things like what to make for dinner Tuesday night than about how they are going to screw the American citizenry.