Fasten your seatbelts--there may be another tumultuous turn of events over the FBI's access to locked iPhones.

NBC News reported yesterday (Jan. 7) that the FBI on Monday (Jan. 6) gained access to two iPhones believed to belong to Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, the Saudi Arabian air force officer suspected of killing three people in a shooting rampage last month at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida. The FBI confirmed the existence of the letter to The New York Times.

The letter, purportedly signed by the FBI's top lawyer, Dana Boente, stated that the FBI had tried to obtain cooperation from other federal agencies, foreign countries, and the "third-party vendor community," but nothing had worked.

"Agents are actively trying to 'guess' the relevant passcodes, but so far have been unsuccessful," NBC News quoted the letter, which sounds more like a polite request than an order.

Complicating matters, Apple told NBC News that it had already done all it could for the FBI long before the letter was sent.

"We have the utmost respect for law enforcement and have always worked cooperatively to assist them in their investigations," Apple told NBC News." When the FBI asked us for information related to this case a month ago, we gave them all the data we had in our possession." "We will continue to support them with all available data."

Reading between the lines, Apple seems to be saying that Al-Shamrani has already given them everything that he may have backed up to iCloud or that may be contained in his Apple account.

However, Apple's end-to-end messaging encryption means that the company cannot read his Apple messages, and its device encryption policy means that the company - or anyone else - cannot enter his iPhone without the proper passcode .

Apple's iPhone screen lock passcode requires at least six digits and allows for a million possible combinations, but users can add letters and numbers to create even longer and stronger passcodes.

Apple's safeguards force anyone attempting to guess the iPhone passcode to take a break after six unsuccessful guesses, with each subsequent unsuccessful guess making the break longer; after 10 guesses, the iPhone is either completely locked or the data is erased, depending on user preferences. (Legitimate users are not allowed to use the iPhone. (Legitimate users will need to connect their iPhone to a backed-up computer.)

In 2016, Apple and the FBI engaged in a legal and social battle over a workplace-issued iPhone used by Syed Farook, the American who, along with his wife, killed 14 of Farook's colleagues at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California

Despite court orders, Apple refused to allow the FBI, or even Apple itself, to create tools or software updates to bypass Farook's iPhone screen lock protection The FBI eventually paid a third-party company to access to the iPhone's data, but reportedly found nothing of interest as a result.

Since the Farook case, security measures added to Apple's hardware and software have made it even more difficult for third-party tools to break into a locked iPhone; according to NBC News, Al-Shamrani added his own safeguard: he fired a bullet into one of the iPhones during the attack before being killed by a deputy sheriff.

Farook and Al-Shamrani's case sounds familiar on the surface.

However, the FBI made several technical and legal errors regarding Farook's phone, including accidentally deactivating it from Farook's iCloud account and failing to contact all other possible sources of assistance before asking Apple for help.

He does not appear to have made such a mistake in the Al-Shamrani case. Kieren McCarthy, a reporter for the Register, noted that if the FBI has to issue a court order ordering Apple to unlock the device, the FBI will have a stronger legal basis. Basically, the FBI is saying that Apple is its only hope.

There is still a lot we don't know: it is unclear if the FBI tried to unlock the device using Al-Shamrani's face or fingerprints, but if the iPhone was turned off completely or unlocked for an extended period of time, these methods Id. (It is also not clear exactly which iPhone model al-Shamrani had or which version of iOS he was running. And, of course, it is not clear how Apple will respond to the FBI's demands. Apple executive Jane Horvath said yesterday at a privacy panel discussion at CES 2020 in Las Vegas that the company is still opposed to building security "backdoors" into its devices for police use.