Security forces around the world have been running into a wall for years when they must unlock an iPhone in the course of a criminal investigation. Apple has consistently refused to provide access to its terminals to any class of state security forces and, to date, there was no foolproof system that allowed access to a terminal that was blocked by a numerical code or by a fingerprint.
Extremely jealous of its security, the company founded by Steve Jobs even refused to allow US authorities access to the terminal of the terrorist who perpetrated the San Bernardino attacks . Before the refusal, the FBI had to resort to the services of the Israeli company Cellbrite, the same that unlocked the iPhone of Diana Quer , and to which it had to pay a bill of more than 800,000 dollars to try to unblock the terminal, without it existed no kind of guarantee that he could get it.
The San Bernardino terrorist's iphone was a key element in the investigation of a case concerning national security, which motivated this exorbitant disbursement whose amount the FBI tried to hide and was denounced for it .
However, when a blocked iPhone is involved in a case that is not so critical to national security, agents can not afford the costs involved in this type of operations even though the FBI itself has invested more than 2 million dollars. euros in decryption technology for these terminals .
At present, only the FBI -without counting local, state, county and other federal investigation agencies- has more than 7,800 Apple terminals that it has not been able to unlock . A situation that has led the FBI to star in bizarre situations such as using the fingerprint of a corpse to unlock an iPhone .
However, this trend could change soon thanks to a former security engineer from Apple who has signed up for Grayshift a cybersecurity company that has invented Greykey, a device of a size of a portable hard drive with two cables to connect Apple phones that is able to unlock an iPhone in a period of time ranging between two hours and three days , in the case of passwords with an extension of more than six figures.
The company that has created this device is opting to make itself known with unorthodox practices and surrounded by a certain aura of secrecy . According to reports Motherboard , as did the itinerant salespeople in the Far West, the firm is touring the different police departments and security agencies in the country to demonstrate the effectiveness of their terminals .
Also, the company does not have resources to promote them to use. For example, in its web page the only thing that appears is a contact form and there is no kind of name or description of the products offered .
The information available on this technology is published on the website of the Malwarebytes company . The company Grayshift has two types of terminals called GreyKey.
On the one hand, there is the low cost version of $ 15,000 , which requires internet connectivity and allows 300 iPhone unlocks , at 50 dollars unlocking.
On the other hand is the version of 30,000 dollars , which does not require an internet connection and can unlock as many phones as the user wants .
In both cases, GreyKey terminals can unlock any type of iPhone , including the iPhone X, with any kind of operating system, including iOS 11 , the most recent.
The police departments of Maryland and Indiana have already purchased these GreyKey terminals for their investigations and, in short, the FBI will also have this new technology that it is acquiring through a public procurement process . Also, MIami police (Florida) is also interested in these terminals and is evaluating whether to acquire GreyKey terminals.
It seems that the security of the iPhone has its days numbered .
