14 DAY TRIAL // James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has revealed at a recent event that the agency paid more than $1.3 million (€1.1 million) to break into the iPhone used by San Bernardino terrorist Rizwan Farook.
“A lot. More than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months for sure. But it was, in my view, worth it,” Comey has said, according to Reuters.
Comey has an annual salary of $183,300 (€162,500), but with bonuses or a raise, he can easily make the $1.3 million the agency might have paid for the hack, the same source estimates.
Comey hasn’t provided any other details regarding the hack, but previous reports revealed that the FBI worked together with a group of hackers to break into the iPhone. Originally, it was believed that the agency contacted Israeli tech firm Cellebrite for the job, but more recently, it has emerged that a group of hackers holding an unpatched vulnerability in iOS helped unlock the device.
Hacking the iPhone helped “answer some questions”
The biggest question now that we know how much the FBI paid for the hack is if it was worth it. The FBI Director says that the hack is worth every cent, although the agency hasn’t clearly revealed what information it found on the phone.
But on the other hand, there are reports that the unlocked iPhone contained absolutely no links to ISIS or other terrorist groups, and this is one of the reasons Comey remained quite vague in his statements and only said that the phone “helped answer some questions.”
It’s assumed that the only valuable thing on the device was the fact that it helped investigators discover what the terrorist was doing during the 18-minute gap in the timeline of events when it was believed that he met other terrorists.
Right now, Apple and the FBI are fighting over another iPhone, this time involved in a New York case, which the agency said could not hack on itself and asked the Cupertino-based company to do it.