U.S. Authorities Can Likely Break Any iPhone Now Thanks To Phone Cracker

Encryption has been a thorn in the side of federal authorities for years now, with companies like Apple consistently impending their investigations by not providing security keys whenever they ask. Thanks to an encryption-breaking company in Israel, however, law enforcement agencies might no longer need Apple’s cooperation to crack any iPhone’s security.

The company, in question, is Cellebrite and it is a favorite resource by the federal government to unlock any smartphone’s password-protected security, Forbes reports. Recently, the company has discretely informed its customers that it managed to crack the code to access iOS 11 devices, which basically means that any iPhone running on the latest software can now be broken into with impunity.

This happens to include the iPhone X, which is the most advanced mobile device that Apple is currently selling, and which has security as one of its biggest selling points. In fact, the publication has found out that the Department of Homeland Security actually managed to successfully break into the phone and then harvest information from the device as far back as November of last year.

With a business of this nature, the Israeli company made no loud announcements of its capabilities. It hasn’t even publicly confirmed to anyone that this was the case. Forbes only learned of this development through sources who were not even supposed to talk about it.

As TechCrunch notes, Cellebrite is also able to crack even the latest Android encryption technology, which tends to be less sophisticated than what Apple devices offer. Naturally, Apple and other mobile companies are hard at work to keep phone cracking companies chasing after them.

Thanks to news of iOS 11 devices becoming vulnerable, the Cupertino firm is likely to release a patch soon that will make them safer, at least for a little while. Then the cycle simply continues.