The fog is now getting cleared. It has now been established that the FBI did not single-handedly hack the ‘Bernadino’ iPhone.
An Israeli company called- Cellebrite has been reported to have helped the FBI in getting into the iPhone, the agency believed could be a treasure trove of evidence into the late terror suspect and his links to ISIS. To authenticate media reports of Cellebrite’s involvement with the FBI, the agency is reported to have signed an IT consultancy contract with Cellebrite.
While Cellebrite has refused to make any statement to confirm or deny media reports, shares of the company’s parent company has soared at the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Its website use technical jargon to describe what it does, its Wikipedia page simply says ‘Cellebrite is an Israeli company that manufactures data extraction, transfer and analysis devices for cellular phones and mobile devices.
According to its website, “The company employs over 500 people. Cellebrite was Founded in 1999 and is a subsidiary of the Sun Corporation, a publicly traded Japanese company (6736/JQ), based in Nagoya; it has offices in Israel, the USA, Brazil, Germany, Singapore and UK”. On Bloomberg Terminal, Sun Corporation is said to “operate mainly Pachinko ( Wikipedia says Pachinko is: a type of mechanical game originating in Japan and is used as both a form of recreational arcade game and much more frequently as a gambling device) related business, information and communication business. Pachinko related business includes developing, manufacturing and selling a system to control and monitor pachinko machine, and manage business operation. Sun Corp. also manufactures Pachinko and household appliances and develops game software for family use.”
It is however unclear whether Apple would sue Cellebrite and most legal experts are still looking at loopholes in the American law that Apple can leverage to make a claim in any law court.
