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In a bid to unlock the Apple ( AAPL ) iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino, Calif., shooters, the FBI has turned to Israeli digital forensics firm Cellebrite, according to a number of media reports Wednesday. Reuters said that the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper in Tel Aviv was the first to report that Cellebrite was working with U.S. law enforcement to unlock the device. Cellebrite provides mobile forensic software. Executives at Cellebrite and Apple have declined to comment on the reports. So have FBI officials. Apple is engaged in a legal battle with the U.S. Justice Department over a judge’s order that it write new software to disable pass-code protection on the iPhone that the shooter used. The ensuing legal fight has become a lightning rod for a broader debate on data privacy vs. security. Led by CEO Tim Cook, Apple had refused to create code to unlock the phone, saying that doing so would create a “back door” to bypass its security protections and thus threaten the personal data of millions of iPhone users. Apple says that the government is overstepping its bounds by ordering Apple to unlock the phone. But the case between Apple and the FBI could come to an abrupt end if Cellebrite can unlock it. Apple and the FBI were set to face off in court on Tuesday, but on Monday a federal judge agreed to the government’s request to postpone the hearing after U.S. prosecutors said that a “third party” had presented a possible method for opening an encrypted iPhone without Apple’s help. Cellebrite signed a sole-service contract with the FBI in 2013 to provide data-extraction service, according to Buzzfeed . Cellebrite says on its website that it can obtain data from Apple phones that use the iPhone’s most recent operating system. A case study on the Cellebrite site shows that the company has worked with U.S. law enforcement to unlock phones, including an LG phone for the Tacoma, Wash., police department. A subsidiary of Japan’s Sun Corp., Cellebrite has its revenue split between two business segments: technology for mobile retailers and a forensics system that law enforcement, military and intelligence use to retrieve data hidden inside mobile devices, Reuters said. Scalper1 News
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