April 16, 2021 • 19 mins
The defense has rested, the prosecution has rested and closing arguments will begin on Monday in the trial of Derek Chauvin, accused of killing George Floyd. The defense will continue to claim that underlying health conditions and drug use caused Floyd’s death. Chauvin has been charged with second and third degree murder and also second-degree manslaughter. The jury will be sequestered while they make their decisions. Janelle Griffith, national reporter at NBC News, joins us to recap this week of defense witnesses.
Next, in December of 2015 a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California left more than a dozen people dead. In the aftermath of the scene, an iPhone 5c was found that belonged to one of the shooters. What kicked off after that was a fight between the DOJ and Apple to unlock that phone. Now, years later, we are finding out that the FBI turned to a little known Australian firm which used and exploit chain to finally get in. Reed Albergotti, technology reporter at the Washington Post, joins us for how a terrorist’s phone was finally unlocked.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, April. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles and
this is the Daily Dive. The defense has rested, the
prosecution is arrested, and closing arguments will begin on Monday,
and the trial of Derek Schauman, accused of killing George Floyd.
The defense will continue to claim that underlying health conditions
(00:21):
and drug use caused Floyd's debt. Chauvin has been charged
with second and third degree murder and also second degree manslaughter.
The jury will be sequestered while they make their decisions.
Janelle Griffith, National reporter at NBC News joins us to
recap this week for defense witnesses next. In December, a
(00:42):
terrorist attack in Santa Maridino, California, left more than a
dozen people dead, and the aftermath of the scene, an
iPhone five SKI was found that belonged to one of
the shooters. What kicked off after that was a fight
between the d O J and Apple to unlock that phone.
Now years later, we're finding out that the f b
I turned to a little known Australian firm, which used
(01:03):
an exploit chain to finally get in. Read Albergatti, Technology
reporter at The Washington post joins us for how a
terrorist phone was finally unlocked. It's news without the noise.
Let's dive in. Is this your decision not to testify?
It is your honor, all right? Do you have any
questions about your right to remain silent or to testify
(01:24):
in your own behalf? Join us now? Is Janelle Griffith,
National reporter at NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Janelle,
thanks for having me. I wanted to get an update
in the Derek Chauvin trial. The defense has rested, the
prosecution has rested all the evidence that has officially been
presented to the jurors. It's all done now. We're gonna
(01:45):
have closing arguments starting on Monday, and the jury is
going to be sequestered and then they will render a verdict.
So we're into the final stages of this whole thing. Janelle,
tell us what we saw last in the trial. Derek
Chauvin went up and he declined to testify for himself. Yes,
he declined to testify, which I don't think that anyone
(02:05):
who has been closely following the case was surprised by
I know that I was not surprised by that, because
had he taken the witness stand, he would have opened
himself up to a very tough cross examination. We already
saw this week alone when the defense presented their witnesses,
the prosecutors were not playing around. They were very, very,
(02:28):
very diligent, and they would have asked him to explain
minute by minute, just like they have their own witnesses
and the defensive expert witnesses, why he was on George
Floyd for as long as he was. So he's declined
to testify um in his trial. And now, like you said, Monday,
they will present closing arguments and then once that happens,
(02:51):
it will go into the jury's hand. And also um.
This week the defense presented their witnesses. They had seven
compared to the nearly forty that the prosecution brought right
when it was their turn, and one of their major
witnesses was Dr. David Fowler. He's a retired forensic pathologist
(03:11):
and former Maryland Chief Medical Examiner, so he was the
main guy that was brought forth to counteract the witness
from the prosecution, and he basically said that you know
what the defense has been trying to lay out the
whole time, that George Floyd died because of his underlying
heart conditions, the drug use, and then he threw in
some other thing too, saying that carbon monoxide could have
(03:32):
also played a role. This is coming from the police
car when he was being held down, right, he did,
and that kind of threw everyone off. I think he presented.
He presented that and testified about that. Meanwhile, under cross examination,
prosecutor Jerry Blackwell got him to admit and acknowledge that
there isn't even a clear understanding of whether the vehicle
(03:54):
was even on. Most people believe that it wasn't even on,
and even if it were on, didn't that still makes
Derek Chauvin and the other officers liable to some extent
because it was their car and who else would have
been responsible to have it off. So he introduced that,
and the defense the prosecution rather, I'm sorry, they were
(04:14):
quick to refute it under cross examination, and also Jerry
Blackwell got him to acknowledge that he hadn't even considered
any um test results of whether there was carbon monoxide
in his blood, like George Floyd hadn't, hadn't even been
tested for that, so it kind of really came out
of left field, and he acknowledged that he had no
(04:36):
data backing that that was kind of just his speculation
based on his belief that the car was on and
the proximity the closeness with which George Floyd was to
the exhaust pipe. There was also an issue raised of
a paraganglioma, which is a tumor that they said they
found in George Floyd's abdominal area. I think maybe on
the hip they might have said. So that was also
brought forth and they said that, you know, all of
(04:57):
that stuff together is what George death. But still, let's
say all those things were in place, would he have
died under normal circumstances. The main exacerbation point was Derek
Cholvin on his neck. So the defense had a really
tough time laying all that out, and you know, we'll
see how successful that could have been. But it didn't
(05:18):
really seem to strike the chords that they thought it
was going to. It didn't seem so. And from the
experts I've spoken to this far, I've spooking to legal experts,
and just from my own impartial observations, not only did
it not appear to stick, it also ran counter to
what we heard so many experts say that the prosecution
called and also to the medical examiner. The medical examiner
(05:41):
said that the cause of death. Uh, he did say,
you know that the restraint was at the end of
the day, the main cause. He said, Yes, George Floyd
was not the healthiest person. But the way that he
articulated it when he took the witness stand last week
and also in the autopsy report, was that the aggravating
factor was the pressure applied by police. So, like you said,
(06:04):
if you remove that factor, he wouldn't have died probably,
So that's what it's unclear that the defense made that
argument strongly and all those reports they determined that it
was a homicide. In the defense witness he said he
would have ruled it undetermined. So just kind of parsing
the words there, it seems like. And they also had
a former officer testify also on the defense side, saying
(06:27):
that the use of force was justified in that case.
How did that fair? He did, And he also went
as far as to say that he wouldn't even have
qualified or classified the I don't know how else to
describe it other than force, But he said he wouldn't
even call it a use of force or excessive force.
He said it was justified, and he basically at length
(06:51):
made the argument that police are given, you know, free
reign to act more aggressively than the average person, which
they are, but that does not mean they don't have
to still justify use of force. You can't just be
aggressive to anyone. They have to pose a threat to you,
to the public. And he made that point and the
prosecutor who was questioning him at the time said, you know,
(07:13):
he was even baffled, visibly baffled by that, and that
expert Barry Broad he also said that um, George Floyd
was resting comfortably, and it took the prosecutor completely by
he was completely shocked by it, as I think many
people were like, I don't think anybody would describe the
(07:34):
way that George Floyd was resting comfortably. Yeah. I think
Barry Broad even had to take some of those things
back under cross examination. So just little things falling apart
on the defense side, As we mentioned, the closing arguments
are going to happen on Monday. The defense is going
to continue that it was underlying health conditions, drug uses
what caused the death. The prosecution is going to stick
(07:55):
to plain and simple those nine minutes and twenty nine
seconds that Derek Chauvin was on George Floyd's back, on
his neck is what caused the whole thing. So we'll
see what happens Monday, and you know, we'll see how
quickly the jury comes back with a verdict. Janelle Griffith,
National reporter at NBC News, thank you very much for
joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Legally,
(08:23):
they may have won, and it may have actually said
a precedent where the FBI and other law enforcement agencies
would be able to just force Apple to break into
these phones whenever they had a warrant. Joining us now
is Read Albergatti, Technology reporter at the Washington Post. Thanks
for joining us, Read, thanks for having me back. In
December of there was a terrorist shooting in San Bernardino, California.
(08:48):
This was done by Rizwan for Rouke and his wife,
Tesh Fen my league. They did this at for Ruke's
company holiday party. They ended up killing about a dozen
people or so. And in the aftermath of all of that,
they recovered an iPhone five C from the scene there,
and uh, if a lot of people may remember, you know,
the set off this kind of fight between the Department
(09:10):
of Justice and Apple for a way to unlock that iPhone.
They had just come out with their latest operating system.
It had increased security and the FBI could not get
into that phone. And uh, I think it was if
you know, you try to put in a password ten times,
it might delete the contents of the phone. They wanted
to get in there to see if there was anything
(09:31):
else related to their plot or other people they might
have been in contact with, so that's why they wanted
to get in there. In the end, the FBI went
to a little known Australian firm who we didn't know
who they were until just now. And uh, you know,
it's just a crazy story of how they were able
to unlock this phone. So read tell us a little
bit about who ended up getting in there. Yeah, I
(09:52):
mean you exclaimed the story pretty well. And I think
for five years people have kind of batted around ideas
about who it might d and there's been a couple
of names in the in the media a lot, but
those rumors have been wrong, and the firm was actually
called Asamuth Security, which is based in Australia, founded by
a guy named Mark Dowd who's a very well known
(10:14):
Australian cybersecurity expert or you could call him a hacker,
and the exploit which actually unlocked that phone for the
FBI was written by another hacker who worked for Azimuth
named David Wong and Um. He was also very well
known in cybersecurity circles, especially for his work on iOS
(10:36):
and jailbreaking phones. Do you remember, you know, in the
early days of the iPhone, people used to remove the
software restrictions on their iPhones, which is called jailbreaking, to
install unauthorized software on their iPhone and he would work
on those sorts of things. So both really brilliant people
who you know, well known in the security world. The
probably no one outside of that world has heard of them.
(10:57):
They were behind this. You know, we go act to
what was going on back then. You know a lot
of things just kind of kept furthering the story. We
found out that the FBI ended up paying this company
as a method dollars to do it, so a lot
of money there. But as I mentioned also the fight
between the Department of Justice and Apple. You know, Apple
was refusing to do this and at the time people
(11:18):
were like, why wouldn't you help them? This is a
terrorist's phone. We need this information, but they didn't want
to do it because they didn't want to create this
back door that could later be abused by whoever else.
So that that was kind of the moral fight, I
guess you could say that was going on at the time,
that's right. And you know, there was a court case.
The FBI actually did get a court order forcing Apple
(11:40):
to unlock the phone or help the FBI unlock the phone,
and Apple apparently did have that capability at the time.
So this case was on track to be a precedent
setting case, which who knows how it would have ended up,
but a lot of people thought that the FBI did
have a good argument here legally, maybe not policy wise,
(12:01):
I mean, there were lots lots of debate about whether
this is a good policy, but legally they may have won,
and it may have actually said a precedent where the
FBI and other law enforcement agencies would be able to
just force Apple to break into these phones whenever they
had a warrant. So in a way, as a myth,
really kind of saved Apple from this outcome, because once
(12:22):
the FBI was able to unlock the phone, they really
had no choice. But to go to the court and say, look,
we have to withdraw this. This we because we've already
unlocked the phone, so it kind of delayed it. And
for the last five years we haven't heard much about
this debate, and I think that's in part because there
are a lot of firms out there, like Asmuth who
(12:43):
are able to break into these phones without Apple's help.
There's sort of this balance where if the FBI wants
to do this for a criminal case, they need to
get a warrant, and once they use one of these
exploits that you know, like you said, can cost a
lot of money, that actually it's more vulnerable to being
discovered by Apple or other software companies that might patch
(13:06):
it and then make that exploit useless to the FBI.
So they have to use these exploits staringly. So we
kind of have this equilibrium. Now maybe equilibrium is a
bad term, but we have a we have a system
of checks and down to they're sort of built in
without having this built in back door that the FBI
had wanted. And in the end, it was a little anticlimactic,
(13:28):
you know, they unlocked the phone. There was nothing of
real significance in there. There was no other links to
foreign terrorists or plots or anything like that, so it
was a bust in that sense. But tell us a
little bit about those exploits and how they actually did it.
Because they had to chain a few different exploits together,
they ended up calling it Condor, which you know, it's
a little code name for it. But you know, as
(13:49):
you mentioned, you know, they deal in these little bugs
in the iPhone, and one bug does one thing, the
other bug does something else. You put them together and
then you're able to get into the phone. So how
did they actually do it? That's right? And you mentioned
earlier that the phone had this restriction where if you
type the pass code in more than ten times, it
would erase the phone. So what this hack actually does
(14:10):
is disables the requirement to this feature that erases the
phone after ten pass code attempts and allows them to
just brute force the password, just essentially guess the password.
It was a four digit password, so it didn't take
very long using you know, sophisticated computers to guess it.
But the way it started was long before I don't
(14:31):
exactly know how long before, but before the San Berdino attacks.
Mark Dowd, you know, the founder of Asimuth had actually
discovered this bug in Mozilla code. It was open source
code that Apple was using to interface with external hardware devices,
and he hadn't done much with it. But then after
(14:52):
these attacks, the FBI was looking for this way to
a mock the phone, and Asmuth had already been working
with the FBI on other projects, so they said, you know,
we're actually about we have this. We have this bug.
We're probably nine of the way there to finding an
exploit that will work on this phone. Why don't we try?
And David Wong took that bug and figured out how
(15:14):
to starting with bypassing that lightning port, you know, turning
that bug into an exploit for the lightning port, then
sort of taking it the next level and escalating privileges
with another exploit. In the end, there were three exploits
that allowed Asimth's full chain to essentially remove that password requirement.
(15:36):
Then they went over and tested it at FBI headquarters
and it worked. The FBI then did further testing on
other phones to make sure that it you know, it
works of the time, and then they unlocked the terrorists
phone and then went to the court and Withdrew that
court case. Interestingly, and this is also a new information
in this article. Pretty soon after, like a month or
(15:58):
two after the FBI unloxophone, Mozilla actually patched that bug
and made that worthless. So the FBI paid a lot
of money for this and didn't get to use it much.
They were only able to use it the once. Yeah,
that's crazy. And you know, just for frame of reference,
you know, I live in California, very close to San Bernardino.
You know, it's all southern California right here for us,
(16:19):
So this story was very close to home and we
were you know, all the local media out here was
very much into the story and the conversation. The fight
over opening that iPhone was so intense, with people on
both sides, you know, privacy advocates and then people just saying, hey,
we need to stop terrorists at all costs. So it
was just an interesting debate on that front. And up
(16:39):
until this point, that's why it's significant, we didn't know
who it was, and we didn't know exactly how they
did it, what the exploits were that they were able
to get there. And the last thing too, it's just
the last bit of the story is that obviously as
you mentioned, Apple wants to know who these actors were,
who were the people that finally broke their system there,
and they came pretty close to finding out about it
because they food the company that was co founded by
(17:02):
one of these hackers that was involved in this, so
they almost got there without you know, having to go
through all of this. That's right, that's right. Apple is
suing the security research toolmaker called Karelian and Correllium was
co founded by David wong um An. Apple actually after
the San Bernardino unlock, actually tried to hire David and
(17:24):
then they tried to acquire Karelian. So it's really interesting
how close Apple was to this the whole time and
continues to be. And I think the reason for that is,
I mean, one, it's the security research field is kind
of small when you get to these very high levels
of white I would call them white hat hackers, you know,
(17:45):
good guy hackers who work with government. It's it's kind
of small, and Apple really likes to hire them because
it helps Apple improve their own security. But it also
gets at this other debate. So we had we had
the encryption debate over whether you know, Apple should should
be forced to help the FBI. But there's this other
(18:08):
debate that's a little bit less public, and it's also
kind of a cat and mouse game between Apple and
companies like Asimuth. Right, So, on the one hand, Asimuth
has has helped Apple by creating these ways to unlocked
phones that really negate the need for the FBI or
other law enforcement agencies to go to court and force
(18:29):
the backdoor. On the other hand, Apple doesn't really like
what they're doing, right because they're finding flaws in iOS
and not telling Apple about it. And Apple wants to
fix those flaws. They want to make their phones really secure,
and every once in a while, you know, pretty regularly,
you see these exploits come out that surprise everyone. I mean,
earlier this year there was a full chain with three
(18:51):
different exploits that could be used together to remotely access
iPhones that somebody just anonymously told Apple about and Apple
fixed it. And that does not it's good for Apple.
There are questions about, you know, why don't they catch
these things, and the truth is they can't. It's too
big and complicated to fix every hole. To Apples, it's
constantly fighting against this type of research. Read Albergatti Technology
(19:16):
reporter at the Washington Post. Thank you very much for
joining us. Absolutely thanks for having me. That's it for today.
Join us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on
both Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us
a rating, and tell us the stories that you're interesting.
(19:38):
Follow us and I heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you
get your podcast. This episode of The Daily Divers produced
by Pixors Right and engineered by Tony Sarrantina. I'm Oscar
Ramirez and this is your Daily Dive
It's Friday, April. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles and
this is the Daily Dive. The defense has rested, the
prosecution is arrested, and closing arguments will begin on Monday,
and the trial of Derek Schauman, accused of killing George Floyd.
The defense will continue to claim that underlying health conditions
(00:21):
and drug use caused Floyd's debt. Chauvin has been charged
with second and third degree murder and also second degree manslaughter.
The jury will be sequestered while they make their decisions.
Janelle Griffith, National reporter at NBC News joins us to
recap this week for defense witnesses next. In December, a
(00:42):
terrorist attack in Santa Maridino, California, left more than a
dozen people dead, and the aftermath of the scene, an
iPhone five SKI was found that belonged to one of
the shooters. What kicked off after that was a fight
between the d O J and Apple to unlock that phone.
Now years later, we're finding out that the f b
I turned to a little known Australian firm, which used
(01:03):
an exploit chain to finally get in. Read Albergatti, Technology
reporter at The Washington post joins us for how a
terrorist phone was finally unlocked. It's news without the noise.
Let's dive in. Is this your decision not to testify?
It is your honor, all right? Do you have any
questions about your right to remain silent or to testify
(01:24):
in your own behalf? Join us now? Is Janelle Griffith,
National reporter at NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Janelle,
thanks for having me. I wanted to get an update
in the Derek Chauvin trial. The defense has rested, the
prosecution has rested all the evidence that has officially been
presented to the jurors. It's all done now. We're gonna
(01:45):
have closing arguments starting on Monday, and the jury is
going to be sequestered and then they will render a verdict.
So we're into the final stages of this whole thing. Janelle,
tell us what we saw last in the trial. Derek
Chauvin went up and he declined to testify for himself. Yes,
he declined to testify, which I don't think that anyone
(02:05):
who has been closely following the case was surprised by
I know that I was not surprised by that, because
had he taken the witness stand, he would have opened
himself up to a very tough cross examination. We already
saw this week alone when the defense presented their witnesses,
the prosecutors were not playing around. They were very, very,
(02:28):
very diligent, and they would have asked him to explain
minute by minute, just like they have their own witnesses
and the defensive expert witnesses, why he was on George
Floyd for as long as he was. So he's declined
to testify um in his trial. And now, like you said, Monday,
they will present closing arguments and then once that happens,
(02:51):
it will go into the jury's hand. And also um.
This week the defense presented their witnesses. They had seven
compared to the nearly forty that the prosecution brought right
when it was their turn, and one of their major
witnesses was Dr. David Fowler. He's a retired forensic pathologist
(03:11):
and former Maryland Chief Medical Examiner, so he was the
main guy that was brought forth to counteract the witness
from the prosecution, and he basically said that you know
what the defense has been trying to lay out the
whole time, that George Floyd died because of his underlying
heart conditions, the drug use, and then he threw in
some other thing too, saying that carbon monoxide could have
(03:32):
also played a role. This is coming from the police
car when he was being held down, right, he did,
and that kind of threw everyone off. I think he presented.
He presented that and testified about that. Meanwhile, under cross examination,
prosecutor Jerry Blackwell got him to admit and acknowledge that
there isn't even a clear understanding of whether the vehicle
(03:54):
was even on. Most people believe that it wasn't even on,
and even if it were on, didn't that still makes
Derek Chauvin and the other officers liable to some extent
because it was their car and who else would have
been responsible to have it off. So he introduced that,
and the defense the prosecution rather, I'm sorry, they were
(04:14):
quick to refute it under cross examination, and also Jerry
Blackwell got him to acknowledge that he hadn't even considered
any um test results of whether there was carbon monoxide
in his blood, like George Floyd hadn't, hadn't even been
tested for that, so it kind of really came out
of left field, and he acknowledged that he had no
(04:36):
data backing that that was kind of just his speculation
based on his belief that the car was on and
the proximity the closeness with which George Floyd was to
the exhaust pipe. There was also an issue raised of
a paraganglioma, which is a tumor that they said they
found in George Floyd's abdominal area. I think maybe on
the hip they might have said. So that was also
brought forth and they said that, you know, all of
(04:57):
that stuff together is what George death. But still, let's
say all those things were in place, would he have
died under normal circumstances. The main exacerbation point was Derek
Cholvin on his neck. So the defense had a really
tough time laying all that out, and you know, we'll
see how successful that could have been. But it didn't
(05:18):
really seem to strike the chords that they thought it
was going to. It didn't seem so. And from the
experts I've spoken to this far, I've spooking to legal experts,
and just from my own impartial observations, not only did
it not appear to stick, it also ran counter to
what we heard so many experts say that the prosecution
called and also to the medical examiner. The medical examiner
(05:41):
said that the cause of death. Uh, he did say,
you know that the restraint was at the end of
the day, the main cause. He said, Yes, George Floyd
was not the healthiest person. But the way that he
articulated it when he took the witness stand last week
and also in the autopsy report, was that the aggravating
factor was the pressure applied by police. So, like you said,
(06:04):
if you remove that factor, he wouldn't have died probably,
So that's what it's unclear that the defense made that
argument strongly and all those reports they determined that it
was a homicide. In the defense witness he said he
would have ruled it undetermined. So just kind of parsing
the words there, it seems like. And they also had
a former officer testify also on the defense side, saying
(06:27):
that the use of force was justified in that case.
How did that fair? He did, And he also went
as far as to say that he wouldn't even have
qualified or classified the I don't know how else to
describe it other than force, But he said he wouldn't
even call it a use of force or excessive force.
He said it was justified, and he basically at length
(06:51):
made the argument that police are given, you know, free
reign to act more aggressively than the average person, which
they are, but that does not mean they don't have
to still justify use of force. You can't just be
aggressive to anyone. They have to pose a threat to you,
to the public. And he made that point and the
prosecutor who was questioning him at the time said, you know,
(07:13):
he was even baffled, visibly baffled by that, and that
expert Barry Broad he also said that um, George Floyd
was resting comfortably, and it took the prosecutor completely by
he was completely shocked by it, as I think many
people were like, I don't think anybody would describe the
(07:34):
way that George Floyd was resting comfortably. Yeah. I think
Barry Broad even had to take some of those things
back under cross examination. So just little things falling apart
on the defense side, As we mentioned, the closing arguments
are going to happen on Monday. The defense is going
to continue that it was underlying health conditions, drug uses
what caused the death. The prosecution is going to stick
(07:55):
to plain and simple those nine minutes and twenty nine
seconds that Derek Chauvin was on George Floyd's back, on
his neck is what caused the whole thing. So we'll
see what happens Monday, and you know, we'll see how
quickly the jury comes back with a verdict. Janelle Griffith,
National reporter at NBC News, thank you very much for
joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Legally,
(08:23):
they may have won, and it may have actually said
a precedent where the FBI and other law enforcement agencies
would be able to just force Apple to break into
these phones whenever they had a warrant. Joining us now
is Read Albergatti, Technology reporter at the Washington Post. Thanks
for joining us, Read, thanks for having me back. In
December of there was a terrorist shooting in San Bernardino, California.
(08:48):
This was done by Rizwan for Rouke and his wife,
Tesh Fen my league. They did this at for Ruke's
company holiday party. They ended up killing about a dozen
people or so. And in the aftermath of all of that,
they recovered an iPhone five C from the scene there,
and uh, if a lot of people may remember, you know,
the set off this kind of fight between the Department
(09:10):
of Justice and Apple for a way to unlock that iPhone.
They had just come out with their latest operating system.
It had increased security and the FBI could not get
into that phone. And uh, I think it was if
you know, you try to put in a password ten times,
it might delete the contents of the phone. They wanted
to get in there to see if there was anything
(09:31):
else related to their plot or other people they might
have been in contact with, so that's why they wanted
to get in there. In the end, the FBI went
to a little known Australian firm who we didn't know
who they were until just now. And uh, you know,
it's just a crazy story of how they were able
to unlock this phone. So read tell us a little
bit about who ended up getting in there. Yeah, I
(09:52):
mean you exclaimed the story pretty well. And I think
for five years people have kind of batted around ideas
about who it might d and there's been a couple
of names in the in the media a lot, but
those rumors have been wrong, and the firm was actually
called Asamuth Security, which is based in Australia, founded by
a guy named Mark Dowd who's a very well known
(10:14):
Australian cybersecurity expert or you could call him a hacker,
and the exploit which actually unlocked that phone for the
FBI was written by another hacker who worked for Azimuth
named David Wong and Um. He was also very well
known in cybersecurity circles, especially for his work on iOS
(10:36):
and jailbreaking phones. Do you remember, you know, in the
early days of the iPhone, people used to remove the
software restrictions on their iPhones, which is called jailbreaking, to
install unauthorized software on their iPhone and he would work
on those sorts of things. So both really brilliant people
who you know, well known in the security world. The
probably no one outside of that world has heard of them.
(10:57):
They were behind this. You know, we go act to
what was going on back then. You know a lot
of things just kind of kept furthering the story. We
found out that the FBI ended up paying this company
as a method dollars to do it, so a lot
of money there. But as I mentioned also the fight
between the Department of Justice and Apple. You know, Apple
was refusing to do this and at the time people
(11:18):
were like, why wouldn't you help them? This is a
terrorist's phone. We need this information, but they didn't want
to do it because they didn't want to create this
back door that could later be abused by whoever else.
So that that was kind of the moral fight, I
guess you could say that was going on at the time,
that's right. And you know, there was a court case.
The FBI actually did get a court order forcing Apple
(11:40):
to unlock the phone or help the FBI unlock the phone,
and Apple apparently did have that capability at the time.
So this case was on track to be a precedent
setting case, which who knows how it would have ended up,
but a lot of people thought that the FBI did
have a good argument here legally, maybe not policy wise,
(12:01):
I mean, there were lots lots of debate about whether
this is a good policy, but legally they may have won,
and it may have actually said a precedent where the
FBI and other law enforcement agencies would be able to
just force Apple to break into these phones whenever they
had a warrant. So in a way, as a myth,
really kind of saved Apple from this outcome, because once
(12:22):
the FBI was able to unlock the phone, they really
had no choice. But to go to the court and say, look,
we have to withdraw this. This we because we've already
unlocked the phone, so it kind of delayed it. And
for the last five years we haven't heard much about
this debate, and I think that's in part because there
are a lot of firms out there, like Asmuth who
(12:43):
are able to break into these phones without Apple's help.
There's sort of this balance where if the FBI wants
to do this for a criminal case, they need to
get a warrant, and once they use one of these
exploits that you know, like you said, can cost a
lot of money, that actually it's more vulnerable to being
discovered by Apple or other software companies that might patch
(13:06):
it and then make that exploit useless to the FBI.
So they have to use these exploits staringly. So we
kind of have this equilibrium. Now maybe equilibrium is a
bad term, but we have a we have a system
of checks and down to they're sort of built in
without having this built in back door that the FBI
had wanted. And in the end, it was a little anticlimactic,
(13:28):
you know, they unlocked the phone. There was nothing of
real significance in there. There was no other links to
foreign terrorists or plots or anything like that, so it
was a bust in that sense. But tell us a
little bit about those exploits and how they actually did it.
Because they had to chain a few different exploits together,
they ended up calling it Condor, which you know, it's
a little code name for it. But you know, as
(13:49):
you mentioned, you know, they deal in these little bugs
in the iPhone, and one bug does one thing, the
other bug does something else. You put them together and
then you're able to get into the phone. So how
did they actually do it? That's right? And you mentioned
earlier that the phone had this restriction where if you
type the pass code in more than ten times, it
would erase the phone. So what this hack actually does
(14:10):
is disables the requirement to this feature that erases the
phone after ten pass code attempts and allows them to
just brute force the password, just essentially guess the password.
It was a four digit password, so it didn't take
very long using you know, sophisticated computers to guess it.
But the way it started was long before I don't
(14:31):
exactly know how long before, but before the San Berdino attacks.
Mark Dowd, you know, the founder of Asimuth had actually
discovered this bug in Mozilla code. It was open source
code that Apple was using to interface with external hardware devices,
and he hadn't done much with it. But then after
(14:52):
these attacks, the FBI was looking for this way to
a mock the phone, and Asmuth had already been working
with the FBI on other projects, so they said, you know,
we're actually about we have this. We have this bug.
We're probably nine of the way there to finding an
exploit that will work on this phone. Why don't we try?
And David Wong took that bug and figured out how
(15:14):
to starting with bypassing that lightning port, you know, turning
that bug into an exploit for the lightning port, then
sort of taking it the next level and escalating privileges
with another exploit. In the end, there were three exploits
that allowed Asimth's full chain to essentially remove that password requirement.
(15:36):
Then they went over and tested it at FBI headquarters
and it worked. The FBI then did further testing on
other phones to make sure that it you know, it
works of the time, and then they unlocked the terrorists
phone and then went to the court and Withdrew that
court case. Interestingly, and this is also a new information
in this article. Pretty soon after, like a month or
(15:58):
two after the FBI unloxophone, Mozilla actually patched that bug
and made that worthless. So the FBI paid a lot
of money for this and didn't get to use it much.
They were only able to use it the once. Yeah,
that's crazy. And you know, just for frame of reference,
you know, I live in California, very close to San Bernardino.
You know, it's all southern California right here for us,
(16:19):
So this story was very close to home and we
were you know, all the local media out here was
very much into the story and the conversation. The fight
over opening that iPhone was so intense, with people on
both sides, you know, privacy advocates and then people just saying, hey,
we need to stop terrorists at all costs. So it
was just an interesting debate on that front. And up
(16:39):
until this point, that's why it's significant, we didn't know
who it was, and we didn't know exactly how they
did it, what the exploits were that they were able
to get there. And the last thing too, it's just
the last bit of the story is that obviously as
you mentioned, Apple wants to know who these actors were,
who were the people that finally broke their system there,
and they came pretty close to finding out about it
because they food the company that was co founded by
(17:02):
one of these hackers that was involved in this, so
they almost got there without you know, having to go
through all of this. That's right, that's right. Apple is
suing the security research toolmaker called Karelian and Correllium was
co founded by David wong um An. Apple actually after
the San Bernardino unlock, actually tried to hire David and
(17:24):
then they tried to acquire Karelian. So it's really interesting
how close Apple was to this the whole time and
continues to be. And I think the reason for that is,
I mean, one, it's the security research field is kind
of small when you get to these very high levels
of white I would call them white hat hackers, you know,
(17:45):
good guy hackers who work with government. It's it's kind
of small, and Apple really likes to hire them because
it helps Apple improve their own security. But it also
gets at this other debate. So we had we had
the encryption debate over whether you know, Apple should should
be forced to help the FBI. But there's this other
(18:08):
debate that's a little bit less public, and it's also
kind of a cat and mouse game between Apple and
companies like Asimuth. Right, So, on the one hand, Asimuth
has has helped Apple by creating these ways to unlocked
phones that really negate the need for the FBI or
other law enforcement agencies to go to court and force
(18:29):
the backdoor. On the other hand, Apple doesn't really like
what they're doing, right because they're finding flaws in iOS
and not telling Apple about it. And Apple wants to
fix those flaws. They want to make their phones really secure,
and every once in a while, you know, pretty regularly,
you see these exploits come out that surprise everyone. I mean,
earlier this year there was a full chain with three
(18:51):
different exploits that could be used together to remotely access
iPhones that somebody just anonymously told Apple about and Apple
fixed it. And that does not it's good for Apple.
There are questions about, you know, why don't they catch
these things, and the truth is they can't. It's too
big and complicated to fix every hole. To Apples, it's
constantly fighting against this type of research. Read Albergatti Technology
(19:16):
reporter at the Washington Post. Thank you very much for
joining us. Absolutely thanks for having me. That's it for today.
Join us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on
both Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us
a rating, and tell us the stories that you're interesting.
(19:38):
Follow us and I heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you
get your podcast. This episode of The Daily Divers produced
by Pixors Right and engineered by Tony Sarrantina. I'm Oscar
Ramirez and this is your Daily Dive
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