It is being widely reported in the news that a judge has told Apple to give investigators access to encrypted data on an Iphone belonging to one of the perpetrators in the San Bernardino shooting case. Current versions of IOS do not allow Apple to break this encryption.
However, it seems Apple is actually being asked to help bypass the feature that autowipes the phone after 10 failed attempts to enter the decryption key, thereby allowing the key to be broken by brute force. This feature is supposed to be under the control of the owner of the phone, not Apple.
But what Apple can give, it can take away. It may be possible that Apple could load a software update (perhaps a temporary one) into the phone to override control of this feature.
<https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160216/17393733617/no-judge-did-not-just... backdoor.shtml>
At least they seem to fight the court order for now: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/tim-cook-says-apple-will-fight-us-gov... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/