Sorry, maybe I should have been a little more specific. I was looking for a primary source that shows this part: "FBI talked about how they couldn't beat iPhones but NSA had them in the leaks & was parallel constructing to FBI." The link you posted only talks about "hacking" iPhones, but nothing about parallel construction. Additionally, it only talks about how the NSA is making use of the device's (local) backup. As far as I can tell that doesn't imply a hack of the iPhone itself.
Oh, OK. That makes more sense. As I said to other commenter, I'm not doing enough research to figure out how they're hacking it directly. There's so many published hacks of hardware and firmware that were designed for secure operation that it would be a miracle if they didn't have something on iPhones. It's more a "insecure-by-default" if it doesn't address what's on my list of attack vectors. I know it doesn't because it wouldn't be compatible with legacy ARM or iOS code without modifications. ;)
Far as parallel construction, let me see if I can quickly Google something. Here's you a few on it early on with FBI and DEA's stronger cooperation.
Further, they'll actually let a criminal go just to prevent either the public or courts learning the details of defense-related techniques. The Stingrays are a perfect example:
Gotcha. I agree that there are a lot of potential security issues present on the iPhone, and if I was a terrorist (or my name was Edward Snowden) I would definitely act as if they were already hacked by the NSA/FBI/whomever.
However, your original comment made it sound like we had direct confirmation of that fact. I hadn't heard that before, which is why I was interested.
I figured that's what you were wondering. Nah, it would take new leaks for us to know about that. Gets less likely as they put their people under more intense scrutiny.
