- Joined
- Jun 18, 2010
- Messages
- 4,891
- Reaction score
- 1,050
Reuters reports that FBI director James Comey has revealed at the Aspen Security Forum in London that it cost the agency more to gain access to the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone than Comey will make in the next 7 years and 4 months that he is in his current job.
It doesn’t take too long to do the math on that, based on the fact that Comey’s annual salary is $183,300, and therefore, not taking into account any raises or bonuses, he will make $1.34 million in the remaining time that he has left in the job.
If this is indeed the ballpark figure of what the FBI paid to unlock the phone, it would be biggest ever fee (that we know of, at least) paid by the agency for a hacking operation, beating the $1 million paid by U.S. security company Zerodium to hack phones.
Despite it costing such a large amount of money to hack into the San Bernardino terrorist’s phone, Comey has no regrets: “It was, in my view, worth it.”
Comey added that the FBI will now be able to use the same software that was used on the San Bernardino phone on other iPhone 5Cs that are running iOS 9, of which there are around 10 million in the US.
Source: FBI paid more than $1.3 million to break into San Bernardino iPhone
