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IPFS News Link • Hacking, Cyber Security

WHEN THE FBI HAS A PHONE IT CAN'T CRACK, IT CALLS THESE ISRAELI HACKERS

• https://theintercept.com, Kim Zetter

After weeks of insisting that only Apple could help the feds unlock the phone of San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook, the Justice Department suddenly revealed that a third party had provided a way to get into the device. Speculation swirled around the identity of that party until an Israeli newspaper reported it was Cellebrite. 

It turns out the company was not the third party that helped the FBI. A Cellebrite representative said as much during a panel discussion at a high-tech crimes conference in Minnesota this past April, according to a conference attendee who spoke with The Intercept. And sources who spoke with the Washington Post earlier this year also ruled out Cellebrite's involvement, though Yossi Carmil, one of Cellebrite's CEOs, declined to comment on the matter when asked by The Intercept.

But the attention around the false report obscured a bigger, more interesting truth: Cellebrite's researchers have become, over the last decade, the FBI's go-to hackers for mobile forensics. Many other federal agencies also rely on the company's expertise to get into mobile devices. Cellebrite has contracts with the FBI going back to 2009, according to federal procurement records, but also with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, and DHS's Customs and Border Protection. U.S. state and local law enforcement agencies use Cellebrite's researchers and tools as well, as does the U.S. military, to extract data from phones seized from suspected terrorists and others in battle zones.