Eventually the F.B.I. dropped its request to force Apple to create a special version of iOS to unlock the San Bernardino killer's iPhone. Since the beginning, every security researcher said that this would have been useless (and dangerous), while the Department of Justice claimed that it was absolutely necessary.

The fact that the DoJ was wrong has become evident when the Bureau said that it has been able to break Apple's encryption, thanks to a private company.

My opinion is that the F.B.I. knew that there was a way but tried to have a court pronounce to be used as a precedent. But when the showdown was near and the result was not sure, the government decided to not take the risk. A judgment in favor of Apple would have blocked every other request of the same type, while now a similar plea can be raised in the future.

In fact, it's not said that the breach used in this particular case can be exploited in other iPhones models (newer ones have stronger encryption features) and, for sure it's not usable on Android and Microsoft phones.

At this point, I consider it as a small battle won by Apple (and by us) but the war is still long.

Image by Surian Soosay taken from Flickr licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.