“The FBI, the DOJ, and numerous other U.S. government agencies have been buying mobile forensics and smart phone hacking tools from Cellebrite — an Israeli based cybersecurity firm — over the past decade,” Steve Morgan reports for Forbes. “Cellebrite manufactures the UFED Touch, a mobile forensic extraction device which the FBI used to hack into the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone 5c.”
“CNNMoney reported last week the FBI alone signed 187 contracts with Cellebrite over the past seven years — averaging $10,883 per contract — according to U.S. government records. That’s more than $2 million the FBI dropped on mobile forensics products and services,” Morgan reports. “The Federal Procurement Data System–Next Generation (FPDS-NG) reports on U.S. government agency purchases. A search on government spending with Cellebrite returns an eye-popping 1,511 purchase orders or other award types as of today. The Cellebrite buyers are a who’s who of federal agencies.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: For anyone who still believes the FBI had no way to get into the terrorist’s government-issued iPhone 5c, we have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, cheap!
Via Cellebrite’s website:
UFED Touch is a comprehensive, standalone mobile forensic extraction device that combines outstanding mobile device support with unrivaled data extraction technology. With its intuitive GUI and easy-to-use touch screen, the UFED Touch enables physical, file system, and logical extractions of all data and passwords, included deleted data, from the widest range of mobile devices.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]