Apple to fight court ruling ordering company to help FBI hack San Bernardino shooter's iPhone

Shooting: An SUV with its windows shot out that police suspect was the getaway vehicle from at the scene of a shooting in San Bernardino, California
Reuters
Mark Blunden @_MarkBlunden17 February 2016

Apple will fight a US court order compelling the company to help the FBI hack into an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, chief executive Tim Cook said today.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife massacred 14 people and wounded 22 others at a Christmas party in December, before being shot dead by police.

The case heightens a long-running dispute between tech companies and security services over the limits of encryption used in consumers’ phones.

Yesterday Judge Sheri Pym of US District Court in Los Angeles ruled Apple must provide “reasonable technical assistance” to investigators trying to recover data from Farook’s locked iPhone 5C.

Today, Mr Cook said in a statement: “The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers.

“We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.”

Opposition: Chief executive Tim Cook
Reuters

The FBI has been examining to what extent the couple communicated with Islamist terror groups before their rampage.

The 5C would include Apple encryption software if its operating system was kept up to date.

The “assistance” includes disabling the phone’s auto-erase function, which wipes all data after 10 consecutive unsuccessful attempts to input a passcode.

It also includes assisting investigators with a “brute force” attack inputting possible codes via computer instead of tapping them in by hand.

Farook reportedly used a four-digit passcode, meaning there are 10,000 possible combinations.

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