On Sunday, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) said it was struggling to gain access to the phone owned by the man identified as Donald Trump’s shooter.
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The phone owned by Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man who shot and wounded former US President Donald Trump on July 13, had his phone seized by the FBI, who attempted to gain access to it in hopes of establishing a clear motivation for the attempted assassination. However, the FBI was unable to it themselves and contacted Israeli digital intelligence company Cellebrite, which specializes in providing data management tools for federal, state, and local law enforcement, along with enterprise companies.
The information comes from Bloomberg, who was in contact with people close to the investigation who requested anonymity to be able to speak freely. The local FBI bureau in Pittsburgh uses the Cellebrite software, but that software couldn’t bypass the security on Crooks’ Android-powered Samsung smartphone. The FBI contacted the Cellebrite team and then was transferred to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, to provide technical support while it was developing new cracking software.
Once the new software was developed and sent to the FBI, it took 40 minutes to get into Crooks’ device. Notably, the Cellebrite software can unlock a device by generating millions of password attempts while simultaneously disabling the operating system’s password-triggering software. Bloomberg wasn’t able to identify the specific method Cellebrite used to unlock Crooks’ device.
