FBI Successfully Unlocks iPhone ⇥ latimes.com

Just a month and a bit after the FBI swore in court that they would be unable to proceed without requiring Apple to undermine iOS’ security in their favour, they’ve now unlocked the iPhone. Hurrah.

Joel Rubin, James Queally, and Paresh Dave, Los Angeles Times:

The breakthrough came over the weekend, when FBI agents successfully extracted the phone’s contents, a law enforcement official said during a call with reporters. The official spoke on the condition his name not be used.

The official declined to say anything about the contents of the phone other than to say FBI agents are examining it.

The official declined to offer any details about the hacking method or the outside party that provided it.

You can bet Apple will be treating this as a bug report, and will be looking for any loophole that would allow anyone the ability to decrypt an iPhone’s contents. When they find it, they will fix it, and this case will start anew. At the very least, it’s terrific news this iPhone and this case in particular were not used to set a precedent. But this is far from over.