Apple Says It Would Take a Month to Enable FBI Hack of Terrorists' iPhone

Lawyers for Apple have told a federal judge that it would take as long as four weeks and maybe longer to build software that the U.S. Department of Justice has requested in the hope of breaking into the iPhone belonging to the dead San Bernardino shooter.

In a motion filed today, Apple argued that it “would require significant resources and effort” to develop the software, requiring at least six and as many as 10 software engineers working on the project full-time for at least two weeks and as long as four weeks.

Apple said the team required would need to include “engineers from Apple’s core operating system group, a quality assurance engineer, a project manager and either a document writer or a tool writer.”

FBI agents investigating the San Bernardino shooting have pressed Apple to create software that would turn off the “passcode lock” feature that wipes data from an iPhone after 10 unsuccessful tries to access the phone. Apple CEO Tim Cook has so far refused, arguing that if the company were to comply it would set a bad precedent and harm the privacy interests of Apple customers around the world.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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