Oliver Haslam on July 19, 2024, 5:10 pm

The FBI Used A Cellebrite Device To Unlock Ex-President Trump’s Assassin’s Samsung Phone In Just 40 Minutes

Cellebrite is a company that creates iPhone and Android-unlocking devices that are used by law enforcement officials the world over.

The devices are used to crack the passcodes of phones that could potentially hold important information in all manner of cases — and now one has been used to unlock the phone of the man who attempted to assassinate former US president Donald Trump.

The attacker, confirmed to be Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire at a Trump rally last weekend before hitting him in the ear. Crooks was later killed by a marksman, but that led to a race against time to find out what was behind the attack. And that meant gaining access to the attacker’s phone.

According to a Bloomberg report, the FBI initially struggled to gain access to Crooks’ Samsung Android device when using their Cellebrite unlocking hardware. The hardware manufacturer was then employed to help.

The local FBI bureau in Pittsburgh held a license for Cellebrite software, which lets law enforcement identify or bypass a phone’s passcode. But it didn’t work with Crooks’ device, according to the people, who said the deceased shooter owned a newer Samsung model that runs Android’s operating system.

Once Cellebrite was contacted, additional support was provided to the FBI’s Quantico location. That support included “additional technical support and new software that was still being developed,” Bloomberg reports.

Notably, once the new software was used it only took the FBI a total of 40 minutes to gain access to the attacker’s phone. Data was extracted and will now be used to build a better picture of what happened in the weeks and days prior to the shooting.