GrayShift is a new lawful access company, with an ex-Apple engineer, Braden Thomas (pictured) on its staff, that promises to break into the latest iPhones. At least one local police department, has already signed up to its GrayKey service, reports Motherboard.
Judging by a purchase order obtained by site, the Indiana State Police bought one GrayKey unit costing $500, and a “GrayKey annual license—online—300 uses,” for $14,500. The order, and an accompanying request for quotation, indicate the unlocking service was intended for Indiana State Police’s cybercrime department.
As Forbes has reported Grayshift is an American start-up that appears to be run by long-time U.S. intelligence agency contractors and an ex-Apple security engineer. It offers a $15,000 iPhone unlock tool named GrayKey, which permits 300 uses. That’s for the online mode that requires constant connectivity at the customer end; an offline version costs $30,000 and comes with unlimited uses. GrayKey can purportedly unlock iPhones running iOS 10 and 11, with iOS 9 support in the works.
Thomas previously worked at at the tech giant for six years as a security engineer. At Apple, he focused on drastically increasing the internal fuzzing throughput and coverage, as well as performing proactive security reviews for many high-profile features.
