The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has led several US agencies to investigate what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks to take a rifle and attempt to shoot from a rooftop. In these investigations, his phone has been crucial in finding out. However, accessing it posed a rather titanic task: nowadays, both iOS and Android completely shield their systems to prevent external entities from accessing them. Surprisingly, the FBI announced a few days ago that they had already managed to access Crooks’ phone. How did they do it?
First, we need to understand what a zero-day vulnerability is. Its name already gives us clues: it is a security hole that has just been discovered and, therefore, has not yet been fixed. These are exploited by malicious actors to attack affected devices.
Has the FBI taken advantage of any of these vulnerabilities? We don’t know for sure. However, it is possible that they had external help to access Crooks’ phone. There are several companies that profit significantly from exploiting these flaws, either by collaborating with agencies like the FBI or by selling their services to clients with questionable intentions. Here, not even the big rewards offered by Apple or Google for reporting security flaws compensate for the great economic benefit that comes from taking the other path.
One of the most notorious cases was that of Pegasus, a spyware developed by the Israeli cyber intelligence company NSO Group. This sophisticated software was capable of collecting personal data from Android and iOS mobile devices under the argument of combating terrorism. It was later discovered that it was used by several governments to spy on journalists and political leaders, among others.
In the case of Crooks, it is likely that the FBI would have collaborated with Cellebrite. This is indicated by Cooper Quintin, a security researcher, for The Verge. This is another Israeli company that provides tools to security forces to extract data from all types of mobile devices.
The truth is that we don’t know how the FBI managed to access Crooks’ mobile phone. To find out the details, we will have to wait and see if they finally decide to make it public.
