Anti-virus developer John McAfee has offered to help the FBI unlock the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone, one day after Apple refused to cooperate with authorities citing privacy concerns.
“I will, free of charge, decrypt the information on the San Bernardino phone, with my team,” McAfee wrote in a piece for Business Insider.
The iPhone belonged to Syed Rizwan Farook, the husband in the husband-and-wife terrorist team that killed 14 people and wounded 22 others in California in December 2015.
McAfee bragged in the piece that he works “with a team of the best hackers on the planet,” and if they couldn’t break the encryption he would “eat my shoe.”
McAfee claimed that Apple allowing the FBI to use a backdoor into the system would spell doom. “Our world, as we know it, is over,” he said.
Apple’s Tim Cook made a similar argument, saying if he allowed the government into a backdoor there would be “no way to guarantee” control over its access.
So McAfee made the offer, which would feature his team decrypting the information while allowing Apple to withstand the pressure to compromise its iOS system.
“We will primarily use social engineering, and it will take us three weeks,” McAfee wrote. “If you accept my offer, then you will not need to ask Apple to place a back door in its product, which will be the beginning of the end of America.”
