Select a region
The FBI has said it will take at least two weeks to know whether an alternative method can unlock an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terror attackers.
US government officials were asked to file a status report in court about the method by April 5, the time frame in which they think it will take to know if they’re able to unlock the phone without compromising the data it contains.
At the government’s request, a judge cancelled a court hearing on the matter set for Tuesday.
Fourteen people were killed in the San Bernardino attack by Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik on December 2, who were later killed in a gun battle with police.
Prosecutors say the phone used by Farook probably contains evidence of the attack in which the county food inspector and his wife murdered people at a holiday lunch attended by many of his work colleagues.
The FBI has said the couple were inspired by the Islamic State group, but investigators are still trying to piece together what happened and find out if there were others involved.
The publicity around the iPhone case generated a number of proposed solutions, but none was deemed potentially usable until now, according to two law enforcement officials close to the case.
The new method is going to be tested on other phones before it is perfected, to avoid deleting the data on the target device, one of the officials said.
Speculation about the source of the method has centred on a little-known but thriving industry of computer forensics in which firms work with the FBI and other police agencies around the world.
While it could be an independent hacker, several experts said the proposed solution most likely came from one of those firms, possibly one that already works for the government.
