Professional hackers who helped the FBI unlock the phone used by one of the San Bernardino gunmen received a one-time fee from the government for their services, reports The Washington Post.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, The Washington Post reports these types of professional hacker search for vulnerabilities in software they can exploit, and they sometimes sell information on the vulnerabilities to the U.S. government.
Hackers who find flaws and sell them to others are often deemed "gray hats." Buyers can include governments or companies that make surveillance tools, according to the report. They fall in a middle ground between "white hats" — hackers who share vulnerabilities they find with the companies who created the software so they can fix them — and "black hats" — hackers who exploit those vulnerabilities to hack networks and steal information.
The federal government is still deciding whether it will share information on how it accessed the iPhone with Apple, according to the report.
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