Technology

FBI agrees to crack iPhone and iPod in Arkansas homicide

After cracking a terrorist’s iPhone, the FBI has agreed to crack iPhone and iPod in the Arkansas case where two teenagers are accused of the double homicide of Robert and Patricia Cogdell.

Faulkner County prosecuting attorney, Cody Hiland told the Associated Press that the FBI had accepted a request from his office and the Conway Police Department to crack the devices.

FBI has agreed to crack iPhone and iPod in the Arkansas case
FBI agrees to crack iPhone and iPod in Arkansas case.

Cody Hiland said:

“The iPod had just come into our possession a couple of weeks ago. Obviously when we heard that [the FBI] had been able to crack that phone we wanted to at least ask and see if they wanted to help.”

The agreement between the FBI and the Arkansas Prosecutor comes just two days after the Federal law enforcement agency disclosed that it successfully extracted data from an iPhone 5c used by Syed Rizwan Farook, San Bernardino terror suspect.

Earlier, Apple didn’t agree to create a software workaround for FBI as it would weaken the security of millions of Apple devices across the globe. Now, the federal law enforcement agency has its own way to crack an iPhone.

The FBI didn’t disclose if it would use the same method to unlock the Apple devices involved in Arkansas homicide as used in the San Bernardino case. The iOS versions running on the target devices are also not known.

An anonymous official told the L.A. Times that the FBI was unlikely to use the San Bernardino forensics tool in Arkansas homicide because it’s a criminal prosecution and the FBI would have to disclose the vulnerability. Once the vulnerability is made public, it would likely be fixed by Apple, making it much less valuable to the FBI.

Now, when the FBI has agreed to crack iPhone and iPod in the Arkansas case, let’s see how the federal agency cracks them.

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