The company doesn’t provide guidance on hacks though
A report published by Forbes and citing John Bennett, the head of San Francisco’s FBI division, reveals that Apple is teaching the bureau’s experts to extra data from iPhone, Mac, and iCloud accounts.
Cupertino, however, doesn’t provide any kind of guidance as to how to break the encryption of its devices or hack them, but instead does alert FBI’s experts when new updates for iOS and macOS could bring changes that might impact the current state of an investigation.
Apple hasn’t acknowledged the collaboration with the FBI, but Bennet explained that forensic specialists often meet with Apple experts to discuss matters like data collection from iDevices.
“We have a great relationship with them [Apple] from a local field perspective and also from understanding products and what they do from an engineering standpoint, which [goes back] to Quantico,” the FBI official was quoted as saying by the cited source.
“From our experience in San Francisco, we have meetings with Apple and they are not only a great company but they’re also victims. Their stuff gets hit and their employees get in harm’s way, so they call us locally on a lot of things they need help for.”
The most famous dispute between Apple and the FBI over the unlocking of devices took place in 2015 when the company was asked to help break into a phone used by the San Bernardino terrorists.
Apple refused to do it claiming that it doesn’t have a hacking solution and developing one would compromise the security of all its customers, with the FBI eventually turning to a third-party group of hackers that was reportedly paid $1 million to extract data from the phone.
