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Comment by klinquist | Hacker News Reader

No. This requires an expensive license for a government agency to purchase in order to take advantage of this functionality.

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Sounds like “this tsa approved lock needs a special key you can totally not just buy on Amazon”

Sure, it’s just that the special key costs a million dollars

Can you provide a reference to that?

Unfortunately not a one I can prove to you online. I have a family member who is a district attorney, so that's my source. He said that that companies like the ones mentioned in the article sell licenses to unlock a single phone to a city or county. The city or county pays if they consider it worth it. The cost can be 5 figures.

(so the people that discover these exploits will sell them to the companies for 6 or 7 figures, far more than they would get from an Apple/Android bug bounty)

The article references Magnet Forensic’s Graykey being used for this. Wikipedia shows its like 15-30k per year[1]. Doubt the relevant exploit is available to the average phone thief.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayshift

But still available to the above average phone thief that has a buddy in digital forensics that helps him prep the goods for sale.

Government contract data is public

Here's a renewal of one, presumably basic, license:

https://bidbanana.thebidlab.com/contract/4jKIvKMvZdoWo3d6K6q...

The product is not publicly available, and is sold only B2G: https://www.magnetforensics.com/products/magnet-graykey/#par...

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