An Israeli tech company helped the FBI break into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists, according to an
NBC News report.
The network cited industry sources on its Nightly News broadcast Tuesday, saying Cellebrite — which specializes in, among other things, mobile forensics — helped the Bureau access what was on the iPhone 5c used by Syed Rizwan Farook.
Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik shot and killed 14 people during a Dec. 2, 2015 attack on a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif. The pair died in a police shootout later that day.
Police recovered Farook's cell phone but could not access the data on the device because it required a passcode. The FBI took legal action against Apple to help it unlock the phone, but
the company balked. On March 21, the FBI canceled a court hearing on the matter in order to test a method to hack into the phone without Apple's help.
The Bureau signed a $15,278.02 contract with Cellebrite for "Information Technology Software" that same day. The Bureau has done business with Cellebrite in the past.
A March 28 court filing confirmed that the FBI was able to access the phone's data and no longer needed Apple's help.
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