Cellebrite Sent The FBI Unreleased Software To Crack The Trump Shooter’s Phone

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the to-what-end-though dept

If nothing else, it appears the FBI has decided it’s not worth fighting the “compelled assistance” battle again. Several years ago, the DOJ went to court in hopes of forcing Apple to decrypt a phone belonging to the (dead) San Bernardino shooter.

It didn’t go well for the DOJ or the FBI, no matter how much then-FBI director James Comey bitched about it. The phone was eventually unlocked. And Comey has since been replaced, but his successor (Chris Wray) is just as dumb, dishonest, and histrionic about device encryption.

Fortunately, we haven’t heard anything from Chris Wray about the latest extremely minimal and temporary hiccup the FBI encountered while breaking into the phone owned by the person who tried to kill Donald Trump but killed an innocent person instead.

After a couple of days of failure, the FBI apparently reached out to one of its preferred vendors. And, as Bloomberg reports, that company — the Israel-based Cellebrite — apparently had a solution.

The agents called Cellebrite’s federal team, which liaises with law enforcement and government agencies, according to the people.

Within hours, Cellebrite transferred to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, additional technical support and new software that was still being developed. The details about the unsuccessful initial attempt to access the phone, and the unreleased software, haven’t been previously reported.

Once the FBI had the Cellebrite software update, unlocking the phone took 40 minutes, according to reporting in the Washington Post, which first detailed the FBI’s use of Cellebrite.

So much for “going dark.” This reporting follows a report on leaked Cellebrite documents by Joseph Cox for 404 Media that detailed Cellebrite’s capabilities, at least as of April 2024. According to those documents, post-2020 iPhones running the latest version of iOS were beyond the cellphone-cracking powers of Cellebrite. It wasn’t quite as clear-cut for Android phones, although it did appear Google Pixels were less crackable than others.

According to the Bloomberg report, the shooter’s phone was a “newer Samsung model,” which doesn’t add much to the “what phones can be cracked” matrix. While I’m sure the FBI appreciated the assist from Cellebrite, it’s unclear what they hope to learn from cracking the dead shooter’s phone.

What they have learned isn’t doing much to assure the public that law enforcement is at the top of its game, especially when it comes to the Secret Service. What has been gleaned from the phone extraction are unsettling details like the shooter’s drone flight over the rally grounds prior to the shooting. It also hasn’t given exactly given Trump fans the satisfaction they so sorely want: the shooter was a registered Republican, albeit one that recently donated an extremely small amount to a progressive cause.

What is clear is that law enforcement isn’t out of options when it comes to encrypted devices. And that has always been the case, no matter how many might proclaim criminals have the upper hand, despite not being in control of Nasdaq-listed companies (which Cellebrite is). Phones can be cracked, even when the option of simply beating a password out of someone is no longer an option.

As for the rest of this sad state of affairs, I won’t say much more than this: the party encouraging the most violence was the recipient of it here. But the greater problem isn’t the rhetoric so much as it is the rhetorical options, so to speak. The Secret Service, working in conjunction with law enforcement, appears to have been looking past this game to the Republic National Convention, to use a sportsball analogy. But even if everyone had their shit locked down tight, there’s simply no way to completely prevent the act of violence witnessed during this Trump rally.

As usual, The Onion has summed it up best:

Investigation Finds Secret Service Failed To Account For Nation’s 393 Million Guns

And The Onion knows where we’re headed from here because it will always fail to see the forest for the 393 million trees:

WASHINGTON—In response to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend, Congress moved quickly to pass legislation Monday that bans the civilian use of roofs. “As our country continues to reel from this horrific event, we in Congress have taken action by enacting a nationwide ban on all roofs, roof terraces, and balconies,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, explaining that the would-be assassin, who shot at and nearly killed Trump from atop a building 430 feet away, highlighted just how lax U.S. laws had been in addressing the threat of widespread roof access.

In the end, the FBI got what it wanted. But what did it actually learn from this experience? So far, there are no answers. And no matter how much agents root around in the shooter’s phone, they’ll never find a satisfactory answer. All it got was the assurance that if it asks nicely (or desperately!), it will get the help it wants, even if it’s not anything it really needs.

Filed Under: cellphone cracking, donald trump, encryption, fbi
Companies: cellebrite, samsung