New York Cops Are Hacking iPhones With Secretive $15,000 GrayKey

With its promise to unlock the latest Apple iPhone models, the Grayshift GrayKey has been increasingly popular across local and federal police forces. From the FBI and the Coast Guard to the IRS, U.S. government divisions have become big fans of the hacking box, which hooks up to iPhones via the Lightning port before attempting to find device passcodes.

But, until now, there was no solid evidence GrayShift’s digital lockpick worked as advertised. No case had been documented where the GrayKey had cracked open an actual iPhone. But this week Forbes obtained a successful application for a court order (published below) to allow the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York to use GrayKey to unlock a pair of iPhones belonging to a suspect accused of selling crack to an undercover officer.

Legal representation for the suspect, whose name has not been revealed, said they believed GrayKey was successful in gaining access to the client’s iPhones. Jerome Greco, staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, told Forbes his team was waiting to learn what data was actually obtained from the devices. The client was arrested in summer 2017 and in winter of that year investigators tried to access the phone without GrayKey but failed, Greco explained. The order allowing use of GrayKey arrived this spring, said Greco, who declined to give precise dates to protect the identity of the client. He was also unable to divulge the models of the searched iPhones.