FBI Seeks to Break Into Locked iPhone Owned By Minnesota Mall Stabber

The FBI has confirmed that it is trying to crack another iPhone owned by a criminal. The iPhone in question was owned by Dahir Adan who was shot and killed by police after stabbing 10 people at a Minnesota mall in September. The terrorist group IS has claimed credit for the attacks, though there is no evidence that the organization had a hand in planning the attack. The FBI is seeking access to the phone to establish whether Adan did indeed communicate with IS before the attack.

At a press conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota, FBI special agent Richard Thornton stated: “We are in the process of assessing our legal and technical options to gain access to this device and the data it may contain.”

The FBI and Apple famously clashed in court earlier this year over the company’s refusal to assist federal agents in breaking into an iPhone 5c belonging to one of the San Bernardino attackers. The dispute became moot when the FBI paid a still-unknown third-party hacker over $1 million to unlock the smartphone and withdrew its suit, but the underlying legal questions remain unresolved.

The FBI has not confirmed whether it will seek to legally compel Apple to assist the bureau. Also unknown is what model of iPhone Adan possessed. If the model is an iPhone 6 or earlier, the FBI can ostensibly hire the same hacker it used earlier, or utilize the NAND mirroring technique developed by a Cambridge scientist to clone the phone’s memory chip and break into it by brute force.

Models running iOS 8 or later feature much more stringent and robust security protocols that would prove vexing for would-be intruders, including the FBI and Apple.