Following the events of Saturday, July 13, the day a sniper attempted to assassinate former United States President Donald Trump, the FBI is still trying to unravel the mystery behind the actions of the man behind the gun. Thomas Matthew Crooks is dead after the attack on Trump and the FBI is continuing its investigation into the alleged shooter’s motive.
After two days of being with Crooks’ cell phone, the FBI released a statement saying they were now able to locate the device. However, a question arises in the minds of many people: How can one access the data on a mobile phone, taking into account all the security measures that these devices currently have?
How did the FBI find the person who shot Trump?
If you’ve heard of a modern mobile startup approach, you’ve probably heard terms like full device encryption and data encryption. However, we can see that this advertisement is not entirely correct as research bodies of many governments can break down these barriers and access mobile data within hours.
Most likely, Crooks Mobile has fallen victim to a 0-day vulnerability bug, so-called vulnerabilities that take 0 days to be discovered and patched by their developers. This means that mobile phone manufacturers are unaware of the flaws, many companies exploit and sell to the highest bidder.
Even large companies may know about these software flaws, but they withhold the information, because it can be very useful in such cases. According to speculation, Apple could have sold that data to the North American government to gain access to Crooks’s cell phone and earn a large sum of money.
The history of Pegasus and the NSO team
In the past, there have been reports of groups that can bypass the security system of iPhone mobile phones, Pegasus and the NSO group. Pegasus is the name of a mobile surveillance program developed by a group of experts in Israel as a way to fight crime and terrorism. However, there have been repeated reports in various countries of the world, including the United States, that they used it to spy on their enemies.
Like the NSO Group, there are other companies that provide tools for extracting data from mobile devices to many governments. According to Cooper Quinn, a security researcher and technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the FBI is likely to contract with another Israeli company, Celebrit. This was Quentin’s statement in an interview with The Verge.
Needless to say, mobile data protection methods are very effective when it comes to protecting you from common digital criminals. But a government like the United States of America can access all of your information in less time than you think, as it happened to Thomas M. Crooks’ cell phone.
What the government found with Crux Mobile has not been made public, but we will be following the news for more information. Before you go, tell us what you think about this event in the comments section. We say goodbye and hope to see you here again soon.
