FBI Drops Case Against Apple After Unlocking The Alleged Killer's iPhone

In the middle of February the FBI lodged an appeal against Apple in order to access the data contained in one of the presumed killers's iPhone.

A month later, the US authorities announced they succesfully found an alternative method for breaking into the phone hacked the phone and withdraw the pending legal proceedings against the company.

In a motion filed with the court Monday afternoon, the Justice Department has asked a California court to vacate its previous order commanding Apple to create a software tool to help authorities break into the phone.

“The government has asked a United States Magistrate Judge in Riverside, California to vacate her order compelling Apple to assist the FBI in unlocking the iPhone,” United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker said in a statement. “Our decision to conclude the litigation was based solely on the fact that, with the recent assistance of a third party, we are now able to unlock that iPhone without compromising any information on the phone…. Although this step in the investigation is now complete, we will continue to explore every lead, and seek any appropriate legal process, to ensure our investigation collects all of the evidence related to this terrorist attack.”

In addition to the auto-erase function, there’s another protection against brute force attacks: time delays. Each time a password is entered on the phone, it takes about 80 milliseconds for the system to process that password and determine if it’s correct. This helps prevent someone from quickly entering a new password to try again, because they can only guess a password every 80 milliseconds. Instead of being able to try hundreds or thousands of password guesses per second, the feds would only be able to try eight or nine per second.

The FBI wanted Apple to create a version of its software that eliminated these two protections.