John McAfee agrees to decrypt the San Bernardino iPhone free of charge

When the U.S. government ordered Apple to place a back door into its current iOS software to help the FBI decrypt information on an iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters, the smartphone company opposed the request. Apple refused to assist, suggesting that it’s not a good idea to give the government a back door into every iPhone.

Image courtesy of BBC.

However, John McAfee, cybersecurity legend and founder of antivirus company McAfee and Associates, has volunteered to decrypt the iPhone for the FBI so that Apple does not need to build a back door. With his team, he promises to have the task completed within three weeks by using primarily social engineering. This is a process that involves hackers working to find out log-in credentials by tricking people to give them away.

“In a nutshell, dead men tell no tales,” said security expert, Graham Cluley. “Good luck to Mr. McAfee trying to socially engineer a corpse into revealing its passcode. The FBI isn't interested anyway, they want to set a precedent that there shouldn't be locks they can't break.”

But McAfee remains persistent.

“If you doubt my credentials, Google ‘cybersecurity legend’ and see whose name is the only name that appears in the first 10 results out of more than a quarter of a million,” he wrote.

Since 2014, Apple’s newest devices have been encrypted by default, including all data, text messages, and photographs. If one of its device’s is locked, the user’s passcode is needed and an incorrect code entered 10 or more times will automatically erase all of its data (if the option is enabled).

The FBI had two requests made to Apple, asking the company to alter Farook’s iPhone to grant investigators an unlimited amount of passcode attempts without the risk of deleting the data, and to implement a method that lets officials try different passcode combinations without needing to manually type one at a time.

Farook is believed to have used a 4-digit passcode, which means there are 10,000 possible combinations to attempt. The “brute force” attack the FBI asked Apple to grant them would let them try out each combination until a correct one was found and unlocked the phone.

The gunman and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 individuals last December at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif. before being fatally shot by police.

John McAfee’s full proposal letter can be found here.