The FBI did not pay Cellebrite, but rather a "gray hat" group to unlock the terrorist's iPhone 5c

That the FBI finally managed to unlock the iPhone 5c of the San Bernardino sniper was something that was already known. It was also believed to know who it was who helped him do the job, the Israeli company Cellebrite, but that was just a rumor. It is now being rumored that the one who assisted US law enforcement was a independent hacker group without a name or a company to represent.

The Washington Post, citing sources close to the case, says that an unnamed group of hackers received money only once for a exploit so far unknown iOS which was used to access Syez Rizwan Farook's iPhone 5c. At this time it is not known what vulnerability they used, but sources say that the agency took advantage of the software flaw to create a hardware solution that disabled the counter of attempts that can be made when entering the code in an iPhone.

The FBI used an unknown exploit to access the iPhone 5c

In the United States they refer to this group of hackers as "gray hat" whose ethics and information they provide is questionable. The "white hat" (white hat) are the researchers who find and report on vulnerabilities, something that we have seen on several occasions in hackers who create the tools to jailbreak, although they only do so when they consider that the flaw they have found it's bad. On the other hand, there are the "black hat" (black hat) who use software bugs for their own benefit. The gray hats that have found this fault have sold it, but at least they have sold it to someone who in theory will always make good use of it.

Neither the FBI nor Cellebrite They have commented nothing about this new information. On the other hand, US law enforcement does not intend to tell Apple what vulnerability they have used. If they did, Tim Cook and company would soon correct the problem, when what the FBI is interested in is that he be present for future cases. Apple said it would not take the FBI to court to force them to tell them how they got access to the iPhone 5c, probably because they already know how to stop them from taking advantage of that particular ruling in the near future. We'll see what the next episode of the soap opera Apple vs. FBI.