Israeli firm rumoured to have helped FBI hack into iPhone claims it can unlock any smartphone

Israeli firm Cellebrite, which is believed to have helped the FBI crack an iPhone 5C used by San Bernardino attacker Syed Farook, now claims it can decrypt and extract data from any phone in the world. The company said that it has the biggest research and development team in the sector and that the team is up-to-date with the latest technology.

A BBC report details how the firm – that helps the police gain access to data on smartphones belonging to suspected criminals – works with top notch software systems to disable security of the devices. The firm even supplies these units to authorities for data extraction in the field. However, the company has denied being directly involved in the FBI iPhone hack as said that it does not reveal its customers' details.

When asked about the latest Apple iPhone 7, which is expect to have the best security among smartphones, Yuval Ben-Moshe, senior technical director at the firm said, "We can definitely extract data from an iPhone 7 as well - the question is what data."

In fact it is not just the iPhone 7. Moshe claimed that his firm can access data on "the largest number of devices that are out there in the industry". Although Moshe did not divulge much when asked about companies such as WhatsApp that promise end-to-end encryption, he said that criminals may be fooling themselves if they are of the opinion that any form of mobile communication is fully secure.

Just last month another Israeli firm called NSO Group, was said to be behind a hack that reportedly allowed any iPhone to be broken into and have malware installed. Another security firm Elcomsoft, which is based out of Russia recently talked about such vulnerabilities in top-end smartphones and cited the recently released iOS 10 OS. It said that a severe security flaw could allow hackers to crack the passcode for backups stored on a Mac or PC, 2,500 faster than before.