[pavel_lishin]

> The Federal Bureau of Investigation paid more than $1 million for a hacking tool that opened the iPhone of a terrorist gunman in San Bernardino, Calif., the head of the agency said Thursday.

> Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in London, FBI Director James Comey didn’t cite a precise figure for how much the government paid for the solution to cracking the phone but said it was more than his salary for the seven-plus years remaining in his term at the FBI.

> His annual salary is about $180,000 a year, so that comes to $1.26 million or more.

> “[We] paid a lot’’ for the hacking tool, Mr. Comey said. “But it was worth it.’’

I wonder how exactly it's worth it, given that nothing of interest of relevance was found on the device.

[sailfast]

Given that this is FBI procurement, I'm guessing they bought an "Enterprise license" with full support and the opportunity to use the application on any phone that fits the spec just in case because additional procurements would take a long time. Typing this sarcastic comments made me realize that they may have bought this tool for all open cases with this device which actually might've been fairly cost effective, but a bit scarier.

[losteric]

Well now they have a tool they can use at any time.

[LeifCarrotson]

On iPhone 5. Until Apple updates the software to fix the vulnerability.

[imaginenore]

If they know what to fix. FBI aren't idiots to tell them.

[pavel_lishin]

Apple could probably buy the same tool and analyze it.

[tomtoise]

I was just thinking this. Again, I haven't been able to read the article but I was under the impression that the FBI paid to crack this one phone, I didn't realize that they have this tool that could 'hack' more iPhones with.