FBI Hacked Trump Shooter’s Phone in 40 Minutes Using ‘Unreleased Technology’

The FBI has requested novel, unreleased hacking tools from an Israeli tech firm to unlock the phone of Donald Trump’s would-be assassin for clues.

“The FBI was given access to unreleased technology to access the phone of [Thomas Matthew Crooks] the man identified as the shooter of former President Donald Trump,” Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the investigation.

As agents struggled to access the phone’s contents on Sunday morning, they appealed to Israel-based tech company Cellebrite. The firm develops tools capable of unlocking smartphones for authorities seeking clues to solve criminal cases – in Crooks’s case, to uncover possible motives for his attempt to assassinate the former president on July 13.

A 40-minute operation

The shooter’s device, reportedly a new (unspecified) Samsung model, could not be hacked with Cellebrite’s latest commercially available software. So, the Israeli firm rushed to develop a new version, which it then handed to the FBI. According to Bloomberg’s sources, the feds took just 40 minutes to unlock the device using the new hacking software.

Authorities have yet to determine if Crooks’s assassination attempt was politically motivated.

According to reports, prior to the shooting, the 20-year old had searched for images and public appearances of high-profile and political figures, including Trump and current President Joe Biden.

Investigators also found Crooks had been searching the web for information regarding the Democratic National Convention, chronic depression, and the Oxford High School shooting, with authorities finding an arrest photograph of Oxford shooter Ethan Crumbley on his phone.

Commercial hacking

Tech giants Apple and Google adamantly disapprove of the development and commercialization of digital forensics software, as it falls in a controversial grey area where it’s not always clear who is using it or for what purpose.

While most digital forensics firms advertise their products as crime-fighting tools, threat actors (including state-sponsored ones) have been known to abuse the technology to hack the devices of political adversaries, activists, dissidents, free-speech advocates, journalists, and others.

For years, both Apple and Google have been fighting the development and sale of commercial hacking software stemming from Israel, including the infamous mercenary spyware Pegasus from NSO Group.