The recent feud between Apple Inc. (AAPL) and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been anything but a secret. It has dominated headlines over the last month-plus, but after the FBI announced on Monday that it had unlocked the iPhone and would be withdrawing its lawsuit against Apple, it seems as though the feud may finally be over.
The question is, who really came out on top?
Let’s back up a bit first. This all started with the couple (Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik) who attacked a civic-services center in San Bernardino, California in December. When the FBI got Farook’s encrypted iPhone, agents reached out to Apple asking for help gaining access to it. Apple refused to help.
IPhones have long been considered “un-hackable.” In September 2014, Apple introduced new encryption software into its iPhones that would make it basically impossible to unlock an encrypted phone or build a backdoor into them.
And in addition to that, modern phones are equipped with a feature that will erase all data after 10 failed password attempts.
AAPL Stock Vs. the FBI
Naturally, the FBI didn’t want to risk losing everything on the phone, so they asked Apple not to turn off the encryption software but to simply give agents the ability to guess the four-digit password as many times as they needed. Officials had already reset the password, cutting off certain ways for Apple to get the information.
Still Apple declined aid, and on Feb. 16 a federal court ordered the company to help the FBI unlock the phone. The following morning, Apple said that they would fight the ruling as they feared that once software was created that could get around the phones’ security features, it could fall into the wrong hands.
The FBI has since announced that it has successfully hacked Farook’s iPhone, but Apple could be facing even more problems.
As I mentioned, the iPhone had long been considered un-hackable. But now that terrorists and criminals know the FBI has the key, they’ll adjust their plotting accordingly. And until this point, the FBI has shown no public interest in telling AAPL how it was able to beat the phone’s security, which leaves the tech company scrambling to uncover the vulnerability.
Still, I think we can come to conclusion that both Apple and the FBI have claimed some sort of victory. While the FBI probably should have tried to keep the fight a secret, Apple stuck to its roots as a libertarian anti-establishment company that stands guard for consumers and the public against Big Government.
CEO Tim Cook kept his street cred, although I wouldn’t have been against him offering to take the San Bernardino phone to a special location to get the information out of it.
That said, nobody thrashed their phones and techies probably love Apple stock even more now. Plus, any new unbreakable encryption will be a major selling point in the next iPhone.
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