The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said Sunday that it was struggling to gain access to a cellphone belonging to the man identified as the gunman who shot President Donald Trump.
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The FBI seized the cell phone of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the suspect who shot and injured former U.S. President Donald Trump on July 13, and attempted to access it in an effort to determine the motive for the assassination attempt. However, the FBI was unable to obtain it on its own, so it contacted CellBright, an Israeli digital intelligence company that specializes in providing data management tools to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and businesses.
The information was provided by Bloomberg, who spoke to investigators on the condition of anonymity. The Pittsburgh FBI field office uses Cellbrite’s software, which failed to circumvent the security of Crooks’ Android-powered Samsung smartphone. The FBI contacted the Cellbrite team, who were then forwarded to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, to provide technical support during the development of new cracking software.
Once the new software was developed and sent to the FBI, it took 40 minutes to break into Crooks’ device. Notably, Cellebrite’s software is able to unlock the device by generating millions of password attempts while simultaneously disabling the operating system’s password boot software. Bloomberg was unable to determine the specific method Cellebrite used to unlock Crooks’ device.
