14 DAY TRIAL // The FBI has recently managed to break into an iPhone 5c used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists, and now Apple’s expecting the hack to leak so that it can deliver an update to all the other iPhones and patch the exploited security vulnerability.
In the meantime, however, reports of iPhones that are about to get hacked keep coming, which could undoubtedly become worrying for those who own such a device.
Most recently, Cellebrite, the Israeli firm that’s believed to have helped the FBI break into the San Bernardino iPhone, is working on hacking a phone that’s not involved in any investigation.
This time, the iPhone belongs to the dead adopted son of Leonardo Fabbretti from Italy, who wants to access photos and messages from the protected phone. After personally sending Tim Cook a letter to help him recover photos from the device, Fabbretti got in touch with Apple engineers who attempted to extract data from iCloud backups.
It turns out, however, that no iCloud backups were created, so the Italian man was left with no other option to access his son’s photos.
“Parents shouldn’t buy iPhones for their kids”
That was the moment when the Israeli firm decided to give it a try, so they invited that man at the company’s headquarters to look at the data and see if the phone could be hacked. And it appears it can, as the tech firm has already copied the device’s content on their computers and is now working to break the encryption.
Fabbretti has told CNN that the iPhone is protected with a passcode that he doesn’t know, and all he wants is to “see his photos or watch his videos or hear his voice.”
He claims that parents shouldn’t buy their kids iPhones because they must always have control over their devices and be sure they can access stored data at any given moment.
“Absolutely not,” he said when asked whether he recommends anyone to buy iPhones for their kids. “This situation has been so uncomfortable. Parents should be able to control what's in their phones, especially when they're minors.”
Cellebrite has reportedly offered to hack the handset completely free of charge, but it remains to be seen if the company indeed manages to crack the phone open.