FBI Paid Hackers $1.3 Million to Break Into San Bernardino Attacker’s iPhone
It cost the Federal Bureau of Investigation more than $1.3 million to open the iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooters.
FBI Director James Comey alluded to the figure, saying that the agency paid more to open the iPhone than he will earn in the last seven years and four months he has in his post. Comey earns $183,300 annually and will amass around $1.34 million over the remainder of his time as the head of the FBI.
If Comey’s statement is true, it means that the FBI paid the largest ever publicized fee to perform a hacking job. This breaks the $1 million paid by the United States government to information security company Zerodium to break into phones.
During a speaking engagement at the Aspen Security Forum in London, Comey was asked by one of the moderators about the figure paid by the FBI for a piece of software that was used to break the iPhone security protocol.
According to Reuters, Comey answered, “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.”
The US Justice Department revealed in March that it was able to bypass the security protocols of the iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooters. The federal department added that it employed the service of the an unnamed third party to do so, dropping the case filed against Apple to pressure the tech company into creating a backdoor software.
Source | ChinaTopix
