Apple creating an operating system to break into Syed Farook's iPhone 5C would be the "software equivalent of cancer," Tim Cook has said.
Speaking on ABC News the Apple CEO re-iterated his company's decision not to comply with a court order to create a way to access data from the San Bernardino terrorist's phone. The company has been in a bitter public battle with the FBI, which says it needs the phone to be unlocked for its investigations. "The only way to get information -- at least currently, the only way we know -- would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the equivalent of cancer. We think it's bad news to write. We would never write it," Cook said in the interview.
His comments come as other Apple executives confirm they are working to increase the security of future software. Company sources told the New York Times that it was working on ways to make it impossible for government's to break into iPhones.
Cook previously argued that it would be "dangerous" for the company to comply with the court order. He said doing so would create a precedent for other phones to be unlocked using the same method.
Court documents from the US have also shown that the FBI and the Department of Justice want to access data from 13 other iPhones.
The FBI has consistently denied that it wants to create a backdoor to access all Apple devices. Earlier this week FBI director James Corney said the agency wasn't trying to set a precedent. "We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That's it. We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land."
Apple's allusion to further increasing the security of its products further escalates its war of words with the FBI. The company has also been backed by other major technology firms, including WhatsApp, Google, Mozilla, Facebook and Twitter.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
