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Comment by Claudus | Hacker News Reader

Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but maybe they don't actually have a hack. Maybe they just want people to think they do.

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Although I'm skeptical of that idea, it does follow the popular narrative of "The actual goal of this was to force Apple to make a back-door, not to get info from the phone"

That seems like the most likely explanation to me too.

Really the most likely explanation is that Apple writes security bug free code? My guess is the FBI found someone who knew how to exploit the phone or asked a 3rd party with connections to the NSA so there is a level of plausible deniability on the origins.

There are obviously security bugs in Apple's code, almost certainly some which allow for breaking into a device. That's even more likely to be true because the device in question wasn't fully updated.

However, the situation as I see it is this: The FBI realized they were going to lose their legal battle to compel Apple to unlock the phone in question. They then retracted their suit to avoid a precedent being set against them, and announced "don't worry guys, we got in anyway" to deflect attention from that particular iPhone, which they had argued was where the situation would end in the first place.

Your explanation is certainly possible, I just don't think it's as likely that they would really spend $1m on this phone which in all likelihood has nothing of value on it to begin with.

For a government agency to spend money is not as undesirable as it would be for you and me. Budgets have to be justified, and not spending money leads to reduced budgets (and hence reduced influence). Spending budget on high-profile projects can be seen as beneficial to career advancement. Though, $1 million wouldn't get you far if it wasn't for the high-profile nature of this "project"...

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