WASHINGTON — The FBI announcement that it hacked into an iPhone is a public setback for Apple Inc., as consumers suddenly discover they can’t keep their most personal information safe. Apple remains in the dark about how to restore the security of its flagship product.
The government said it was able to break into an i Phone used by a gunman in a mass shooting in California, but it didn’t say how.
That puzzled Apple software engineers — and outside experts — about how the FBI broke the digital locks on the phone without Apple’s help. It also complicated Apple’s job repairing flaws that jeopardize its software.
The Justice Department’s announcement that it was dropping a legal fight to compel Apple to help it access the phone also took away any obvious legal avenues Apple might have used to learn how the FBI did it.
The Justice Department declined through a spokesman to comment Tuesday.
It is a closely held secret how the FBI hacked the i Phone, but a few clues have emerged. A senior law enforcement official told The Associated Press that the FBI defeated an Apple security feature that threatened to delete the phone’s contents if the FBI failed to enter the correct passcode combination after 10 tries. That allowed the government to guess the correct passcode by trying random combinations until the software accepted the right one.
It wasn’t clear how the FBI also bypassed a related Apple security feature that deliberately introduces increasing time delays in how frequently guesses can be entered. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss the technique publicly.
The FBI was reviewing information from the i Phone, and it was unclear whether anything useful would be found.
Apple said in a statement late Monday that the legal case to force its cooperation “should never have been brought,” and it promised to increase the security of its products.
CEO Tim Cook has said the Cupertino-based company is constantly fending off security threats and trying to improve security.
The chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, said keeping details secret about a flaw affecting millions of iPhone users “is exactly opposite the disclosure practices of the security research community.
“The FBI and Apple have a common goal here: to keep people safe and secure,” he said. “This is the FBI prioritizing an investigation over the interests of hundreds of millions of people worldwide.”
