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FBI iPhone Unlock Trick Remains Secret

“iPhone 5C” by Kārlis Dambrāns is licensed under CC BY 2.0

A court says the FBI won’t have to reveal how it broke into an encrypted iPhone belonging to the San Bernadino shooter. The US district court rejected a freedom of information request to find out who got paid – and how much – to access the phone.

The phone belonged to Syed Farook, the man who shot dead 14 people in 2015. The FBI asked Apple to help unlock the phone, but Apple refused, arguing that by design this was impossible. The problem wasn’t so much the unlocking but rather a default setting that would have wiped the phone’s data after a limited number of failed attempts. That in turn limited the most likely FBI solution of a brute force unlock.

The FBI then went to court to demand Apple modify the operating system to let it bypass this setting. Apple refused, arguing that this created a risk of the modified OS falling into the wrong hands and thus undermining the security of millions of handsets.

That court battle looked set to run and run, but eventually the FBI withdrew from the case after finding a way to access the data. Exactly how that happened is uncertain, other than that the FBI paid a third party for help. It also appears likely, though not confirmed, that the solution in question was relatively targeted in that it only worked on a specific model (iPhone 5c) running a specific operating system edition (iOS 9).

Initially an Israeli tech firm was reported to be responsible, but that later came into question. There’s also dispute about how much the FBI paid.

A joint freedom of information lawsuit from the Associated Press, Vice News and USA Today asked for the FBI to be forced to reveal this information. Their argument was that government spending should be a matter of public record, particularly as there was no tendering process in this case.

The court sided with the FBI’s arguments to dismiss the request. The FBI said that if the vendor’s identity became public, it would come under attack from hackers who wanted to access and misuse the tools in question. It also said that any detail about the tools going public would limit its ability to use them in future cases.

[Via: ZDNET]

Microsoft To Kill Off Groove Music

Microsoft is ditching its Groove Music subscription service. And if you’d never heard of it, that probably tells you all you need to know.

Groove launched in July 2015 as a combination of a rebrand of the Xbox Music service and a replacement of the Zune service (which itself was tied to a largely failed range of portable music players.)

It was a subscription service with no ad-supported free tier. As with some of its more popular rivals, it combined the user’s personal collection with streaming of a large catalog. There was also an option to buy tracks outright to play without needing to stream.

The problem was that it didn’t have any obvious advantages to persuade people who were willing to pay a music subscription to use it ahead of Google Music, Spotify Premium or the various Apple offerings.

Microsoft says the streaming and download elements will be axed on December 31. After that the Groove Music apps will only play locally stored music. Monthly subscribers will receive a proportional refund for however long their final month extends past December 31 (assuming they don’t cancel earlier.)

Annual subscribers will also get an automated proportional refund to cover the rest of their subscription period past that date. You’ll need to check the card or other payment details are up to date as if Microsoft can’t automatically refund the money, it will instead pay 120% of the amount in the form of Microsoft gift card.

Annual subscribers also now have the option to cancel before the end of the year and receive a proportional refund on the same basis. Those who cancel within 30 days of starting an annual subscription will get a full refund.

An update to the app will roll out over the next two weeks and will allow customers to automatically transfer their playlists and existing music collections to Spotify (or at least those tracks which are on Spotify).