Documents Show FBI Deployed Software Exploits To Break Encryption Back In 2003
Documents FOIA'ed by Ryan Shapiro and shared with the New York Times shed some new light on previous FBI efforts to break encryption. Back in 2003, the FBI was investigating an animal rights group for possibly sabotaging companies that used animals for testing. The FBI's Department of Cutesy Investigation Names dubbed this "Operation Trail Mix," which I'm sure endeared it to the agents on the case. At the center of the investigation were emails the FBI couldn't read. But it found a way.
They persuaded a judge to let them remotely, and secretly, install software on the group’s computers to help get around the encryption.
That effort, revealed in newly declassified and released records, shows in new detail how F.B.I. hackers worked to defeat encryption more than a decade before the agency’s recent fight with Apple over access to a locked iPhone.
