According to reports, the developer of the software is Grayshift, which sells two versions of GrayKey – one that can only be used on the Internet, with an authorized fee of $15,000 for a limited number of uses; the other is an offline version of $30,000, but no number of times limit.
It seems that the Indiana police obtained the first year’s $500 discount price. A copy of the email received by the foreign media Motherboard shows that the agency hopes to use it. An official wrote on February 20:
“This is a RUSH request because item is needed ASAP for evidence gathering for current cases. Please review and forward for approval.”
In another document, the agency states:
“GrayKey will be used in everything from high profile murder cases to crimes against children cases where suspects are hiding their content from law enforcement.”
The main advantage of GrayKey over competitors such as Cellebrite is the price. Although the price of $15,000 sounds high, the quotation submitted by the former has exceeded $200,000.
Previously, the FBI had to pay about $1 million in cracks to crack the iPhone 5c of the infamous San Bernardino shooting criminal Syed Rizwan Farook.
Although Apple has always been proud of the robustness of the iPhone device’s native encryption technology, as long as the company does not find the vulnerabilities and fill them up in time, law enforcement agencies will not easily end with the combination of search warrants and unlocking tools, let alone legally submitted iCloud data.
Source: appleinsider
