Federal investigators are analyzing device’s content, although it is unclear how agency gained access
The FBI has gained access to the phone of the suspected gunman who opened fire on Donald Trump’s rally and is analyzing the device’s contents, the agency stated in a press release on Monday afternoon. The shooting, which killed one audience member and left Trump bleeding from one ear, is being investigated as an assassination attempt.
Authorities have been working to determine the motive behind the attack at Trump’s campaign rally on Saturday, but no clear picture has yet emerged. The gunman, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks by the FBI, was shot and killed in the incident.
Federal investigators announced on Sunday that they had obtained Crooks’s cellphone, but had issues with bypassing its password protections to access the data within. FBI investigators then shipped the phone to a lab in Virginia, where agents successfully gained access, per the bureau’s press release.
Most phones are locked with a four digit numerical PIN. The current technique is taking an image of the flash memory, and reflashing the memory after every few attempts.
It still takes a bit longer than straight brute force without a temporal lockout, but it’s still pretty trivial.
15 years ago, yes, nowadays especially on iPhone this does not work at all
It does when you have physical access to the RAM and storage, and a disassembly lab expressly configured for this purpose.
This is the backbone for a number of forensic services offered to law enforcement, and an entire cottage industry. I know with certainty it was still feasible as of the iPhone 12, which is well inside of 15 years. I don’t believe the architecture in the 13 or 14 has changed significantly to make this impossible.
With slightly earlier phones, tethered jailbreaks are often good enough, though law enforcement would more likely outsource to a firm leveraging Cellebrite or Axiom as the first step.