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Comment by mjfl | Hacker News Reader

It's always interesting seeing these headlines because you always have to assume that Apple has been coerced by the govt into putting a backdoor into the phones, but maybe not. If I remember correctly, the FBI got an Israeli company to break into the phone, and they succeeded with ease. Maybe it's not the US government that got the backdoor, but another...

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My understanding is that at least in recent years Cellebrite has not had any 100% reliable way to crack a phone. But because people typically use short, numbers only passwords it is enough to be able to bypass the rate limiting to brute force all possible combinations.

To put on my tin hat for a moment. Even if the government had a bullet proof way to crack phone encryption, I would expect that to be a closely guarded secret. Best make a bunch of noise huffing and puffing how you are stymied and cannot see the data. That being said, even if they had the tools, might be something kept in reserve for the most dire of cases, rather than tip your hand and let Apple/Google discover the trick on a minor case.

This isn't even a tin foil hat requiring thing: this is exactly what happened with the 2015 San Bernardino iPhone case.

FBI wanted to compel Apple to release custom, new software to bypass rate limiting on an older device, Apple said "no," and when the case started turn against them, Cellebrite magically "found" the passcode and mooted the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...

FBI made this attempt to establish precedent.

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