FBI chief: Hack won’t work on newer iPhones

The hacking tool the FBI bought to access the iPhone 5c of one of the San Bernardino, Calif., shooters won’t work on newer phones, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday.

{mosads}“It’s a bit of a technological corner case because the world has moved on to [the iPhone 6],” Comey said during an appearance at Ohio’s Kenyon College. “We have a tool that works in a narrow slice of phones.”

He said the hacking tool doesn’t work on the latest iPhone 6 or on the iPhone 5s.

The county-owned work phone that belonged to shooter Syed Rizwan Farook is a 5c model running Apple’s iOS 9 operating system.

The FBI sought to compel Apple to build software that would enable the agency to more easily hack into the locked device. It argued from the beginning that the assistance it requested was tailored to Farook’s device. But Apple rebuffed the court order, arguing that creating such software was tantamount to opening a “backdoor” into all iPhones.

Last week, the Department of Justice unexpectedly revealed it was able to successfully hack into the phone without Apple’s assistance.

The FBI’s success raised new questions about whether the government would use its newly uncovered hacking method to assist other law enforcement officials. Police departments across the country have seized locked iPhones that they are unable to access.

The agency sent a memo to state and local law enforcement last week saying it will help unlock seized iPhones when possible — but whether the tool it purchased in this case would work on other phones remains unknown.

Security specialists have pressed the government to tell Apple about the flaw it exploited instead of using it to access other locked phones. These researchers fear the flaw will leak to nefarious hackers, endangering millions of iPhone users.

Comey said Wednesday there are conversations “within the government” about disclosing the technique to Apple, which could allow the company to patch the vulnerability that allows the agency to access the data.

“That’s an interesting conversation, because [if] we tell Apple, they’re going to fix it, and then we’re back where we started from,” he said. “But, look, as silly as that may sound, we may end up there. We just haven’t decided yet.”