Cellebrite DI Ltd., which announced plans April 8 to go public, is famed for its ability to hack phones such as the iPhone, but according to a new report, it wasn’t actually responsible for its most famous iPhone hack: unlocking the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter.

The Washington Post reported today that the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter was unlocked by Azimuth Security Pty. Ltd., a Sydney, Australia-based information security consultancy. Azimuth is owned by L3Harris Technologies Inc., a publicly held U.S. defense contractor with a $43 billion market capitalization at today’s closing price that acquired Azimuth in August 2018.

The interesting part is the claim that Azimuth did it and not Cellebrite. As far as SiliconANGLE can ascertain, Cellebrite has never claimed that it hacked the San Bernardino shooter’s phone but has never denied it either. To be fair, Cellebrite has never commented beyond basics as to whom it works with and what it has achieved. But articles go back years on how it was supposed to have worked with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The timing, however, is not great and perhaps not coincidental either, with Cellebrite going public via a special-purpose acquisition company.

L3Harris is in a partnership, though its Harris Geospatial division, with Amazon Web Services Inc. to provide geospatial analytics in the cloud.

Photo: Duncan Rawlinson/Flickr