NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden believes that Apple engineers are not the only ones who can unlock the San Bernadino killer's iPhone. Snowden said yesterday that the FBI could have bypassed the phone's auto-erase function without help, The Intercept reported.
"The FBI is arguing in court that Apple has the 'exclusive technical means'" of accessing the iPhone's data, Snowden said via video link from Moscow at a conference organized by Common Cause. "Respectfully, that's bullshit."
Snowden stopped short of explicitly supporting Apple, which is resisting a court order to unlock the phone for the FBI's investigation. But he later Tweeted a link to an ACLU blog post that details how the FBI could crack the phone's encryption.
While much of the debate surrounding the Apple vs. FBI spat has been about whether or not Apple should comply with the order to assist the FBI, there's been relatively little discussion about whether or not the FBI actually needs Apple to access the phone's data.
The ACLU maintains that it is possible using conventional hacking methods. Essentially, the FBI could avoid activating the phone's auto-erase feature by copying the contents of the flash memory before it tries to guess the passcode. That way, it could try indefinitely because if the auto-erase was activated, the phone's memory could simply be restored from the backed-up copy.
Other experts believe that the FBI's initial missteps in handling the phone means it lost out on possibilities to access the data without any hacking required. iOS security expert Jonathan Zdziarski wrote that allowing the phone's battery to die soon after it was confiscated eliminated many easy ways to retrieve information, such as monitoring network traffic and even asking Siri to display call records.