Forbes:
The U.S. federal government, from the FBI to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been handing millions to Cellebrite to break into Apple and Google smartphones. Mr. Balaj (Forbes agreed not to publish his first name at his request) and others on eBay are now acquiring and trading Cellebrite systems for between $100 and $1,000 a unit. Comparable, brand-new Cellebrite tools start at $6,000.
More importantly:
Rather than return the UFEDs to Cellebrite so they can be properly decommissioned, it appears police or other individuals who’ve acquired the machines are flogging them and failing to properly wipe them. Cybersecurity researchers are now warning that valuable case data and powerful police hacking tools could have leaked as a result.
This was one of the scenarios that emerged, back in late 2015, during the Congressional hearings that followed the San Bernardino shooting, asking Apple to build a golden key to allow law enforcement to unlock any iPhone on-demand. The concern then was that the golden key might get into the wrong hands, risking the data and privacy of the larger iPhone community.
not surprising at all – i worked in the IT dept of a major metro PD, and for the most part these guys are dipshits who barely understand technology. “plumbers with guns” as I liked to say…
Back in the day until around iOS 6 or 7 if you had ever backed up a phone or even synced music etc to a particular phone from a computer you could still back up the phone to that computer even if you disabled your passcode by accident. Apparently the first time you connected the phone and the computer a key was copied from the phone to the computer to ‘trust’ the connection.
And rumor has it that Apple had a copy of all the possible keys so if the police brought a locked phone they could connect, back it up, erase it and reload all the data without a passcode. And then supposedly someone claimed they figured out the key system and could copy any phone they wanted. So Apple removed that system, which is why we have to trust the same computers every time we connect an iOS device.