Washington Post shines light on little known cyber security firm and hacker that unlocked iPhone used in 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack

 

Exclusive Washington Post story describes David versus Goliath scenario. The Goliath in this case is Apple, not the US government. Apple sued Corellium, a company that builds cyber security research tools, and has its own 'virtual' iPhones that run on servers for testing and development.

Turns out Apple tried to hire 'white hat' hacker, David Wang, who co-founded Corellium. Prior to that, Wang was an employee of a little known Australian cyber-security firm, Azimuth.

Wang was assigned the task of breaking into the iPhone using an exploit in Mozilla open-source code that was discovered by  Azimuth's co-founder, Matthew Dowd. The code Apple used permits accessories to be plugged into an iPhone's lightening port. 

The story notes that Dowd discovered the exploit before the San Bernardino attack.