Your six-digit smartphone passcode may feel like an impenetrable wall, but to a local cyber crime lab, it’s a relatively simple challenge that can be beaten nine out every 10 tries.
The Vanderburgh County Cyber Crime Task Force has mostly stayed out of the headlines since its founding in 2021, but the group’s work is routinely featured in police reports and court records.
Thanks to an array of powerful tools, the task force has extracted more than 47 terabytes of data from at least 880 phones since January 2021, according to data extraction logs obtained by the Courier & Press through a public records request.
Prosecutors and police use that data to further investigations into a wide variety of alleged criminal activity, including homicide cases, child exploitation and narcotics trafficking.
Some privacy advocates and organizations have raised concerns about the rapid uptake of phone hacking technology by law enforcement agencies and have argued states should oversee how data is extracted, stored and utilized in criminal investigations.
“Search warrants of physical spaces typically have to be quite specific, and police have to take steps to ensure the information gathered doesn’t violate the privacy of individuals not in any connected to the case,” said Jennifer Granick, a cybersecurity lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union.
The task force’s leaders and law enforcement more broadly say these tools are desperately needed in an age where everyone, including potential criminals, uses a smartphone. Jess Powers, a Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office spokeswoman who who now directs the Cyber Crime Task Force, said officials are methodical when sifting through information.
They have the tools to extract all of the content from an iPhone or Android device’s hard drive — whether it’s protected by a passcode or not. That includes location history, text messages, internet search history, sensor data, photos, and even some deleted files.
Origins of the lab
Before the creation of the Vanderburgh County lab, local detectives and prosecutors had to rely on state facilities to extract data from mobile devices, Powers said.
“Before this existed, the average time that we could calculate to get a phone extraction was six to nine months,” Powers told the Courier & Press. “Now we’ve turned that around into ... potentially less than 24 hours.”
The non-profit research organization Upturn found that more than 2,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies purchased mobile device forensic tools since 2015, but integrated cyber crime labs existing at the local level, like in Vanderburgh County, are less common.
“The need existed to just get the digital evidence extracted a lot quicker,” Powers said. “There was no reason why that shouldn’t exist in Vanderburgh County and the third-largest city in Indiana.”
Thanks to federal and state grant funding, Vanderburgh County got the money to get its very own cyber crime lab. The U.S. Department of Justice awarded the county $587,726 in 2021 to fund the lab and $339,986 in 2022.
But all this new tech was just that — new. And it took some convincing to get various local law enforcement agencies on board with the plan.
“It took a little bit of time to earn the trust of local agencies,” Powers said. “You’re talking a big game, but can you actually support it? Can you do what you’re saying?”
Trust would be won over quickly, though. Within the first two weeks of January 2021, the lab extracted its first set of data from a passcode-locked mobile device in what Powers described as a real “a ha” moment.
By the end of February, the lab had performed 45 mobile device data extractions for the Evansville Police Department, Vanderburgh County Sheriff ’s Office and a joint task force, according to data extraction logs.
Hacking into a modern smartphone is no small feat.
In 2014, the FBI sued Apple Inc. after the company refused to unlock the iPhone of a suspected mass shooter. At the time, the FBI couldn’t bypass the passcode. But by 2016, the FBI had partnered with Australia-based Azimuth Security to unlock the iPhone by exploiting bugs in its software. Since then, U.S. law enforcement has gained access to a wide variety of phone cracking tools sold by an array of international vendors.
The Vanderburgh County Cyber Crime Task Force utilizes hardware and software sold by several companies, including the Israel-based firm Cellebrite, which manufactures “mobile device forensic tools,” or MDFTs. These devices can break into a smartphone and extract all of its data.
Typically, an MDFT will utilize a software exploit unknown to the phone and operating system manufacturer that can bypass the number of times a user can enter an incorrect passcode.
On Apple devices, entering the wrong passcode more than 10 times can lock a would-be hacker out of the system. But devices manufactured by Cellebrite and other companies use exploits to bypass the limit.
When a Vanderburgh County investigator hooks up a suspect or witness’ iPhone to a mobile device forensic tool, it can use those exploits to quickly enter every possible six digit passcode combination until the phone is unlocked.
According to purchasing receipts, the Vanderburgh County Cyber Crime Task Force paid more than $100,000 for Cellebrite tools capable of extracting data from both iOS and Android devices.
The task force also purchased an MDFT tool manufactured by the company Grayshift for $27,995 in December 2021. Grayshift says the product can provide “same-day access to the latest iOS and Android devices often in under one hour.”
How much data does the task force access?
In most cases, a search warrant is required for the task force to extract data from a smartphone, but not always. A suspect, witness or victim can also sign a consent waiver granting permission for investigators to gather data from the phone.
But whether you’re a suspect or a victim, you have to give consent for them to copy the entire contents of the hard drive, and thus gain access to every text message, photograph, email and location stored on the device.
“We do that so that when we discover this evidence to the defense, there’s not anything that the defense may claim is exculpatory because we left it out,” task force criminal investigator Gage Shots said. “We want to provide the full picture.”
Some legal experts, such as Granick, advocate for MDFTs to be used in a targeted manner.
“With a smartphone, police are gathering information on every single person whose data may have been downloaded to that device, regardless of their connection to the case, Granick said.
Granick acknowledges the need for law enforcement to have the capability to access digital evidence, but she believes state governments should reexamine and regulate how MDFT products are used in criminal investigations.
The organization Upturn, which examined MDFT use at more than 100 law enforcement agencies across the United States, is concerned by the lack of public discussion surrounding local use of MDFTs.
“Despite the widespread proliferation of these tools, there is almost no public accounting of how often or in what kinds of cases law enforcement use these tools,” their report reads. “The under-the-radar adoption of these tools also means that there has been little public debate about the risk of the tools and how they shift power to the police.”
But in Vanderburgh County, MDFT use is mostly relegated to violent crime investigations, sex crime investigations and drug distribution cases, according to the task force’s extraction logs, which are available to the public through a records request.
“We’re not going to compel a victim to provide their phone to us,” task force criminal investigator Jon Carter said. “We’re not going to compel a witness to come forward if they’re not willing to share that with us.”
When asked what would happen if a witness’ phone turned up evidence of an unrelated crime, Powers said the data analysis would “immediately stop,” and the relevant law enforcement agency would be consulted. But she is not aware of such an instance so far.
In addition to Powers, Shots and Carter, the task force also employees part-time investigators who work a caseload and analyze data that’s already been extracted from devices. Powers said their analysis has helped Vanderburgh County shorten the amount of time cases spend traveling through the courts: down to about 137 days compared with a national average of 255 days.
“Our lab, our people, are very dedicated people that are working there and helping to exonerate individuals. We’re helping to convict individuals, and we never have to put a bulletproof vest on,” Powers said. “We can have an impact. But you just don’t know that we’re there.”
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