Shares of Sun Corporation., a Japanese maker of pinball-style games, have been soaring since reports surfaced that an Israeli company it owns helped the U.S. government hack into an iPhone involved in a terrorist attack.
The Tokyo-listed Sun Corp. is up almost 40 percent since March 21, when U.S. authorities said a third party had demonstrated a possible way of accessing data on the Apple iPhone used in the San Bernardino, California shooting last year. That third party, according to people familiar with the matter, is Cellebrite Mobile Synchronization, which Sun Corp. has owned for almost a decade.
While neither Cellebrite, nor Sun Corp., nor the FBI have confirmed the link, Sun Corp. has seen its shares more than double since Feb. 16 when Apple first took a stand refusing to help the FBI, on grounds that it was an unreasonable demand on the company and threatened the privacy and data security of millions of iPhone users.
On Tuesday, Sun Corp.’s shares jumped 14 percent after the FBI said it was successful in accessing the device using an unnamed outside party.
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth last week identified Cellebrite as the FBI’s partner in working to crack the iPhone. Cellebrite, which has captured a large slice of the mobile forensics market over the past decade, already had the FBI as a client before this project, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified as the issue is private.
The Petah Tikva, Israel-based company sells hardware and software allowing data to be extracted from most handheld devices, even if it has been encrypted or deleted. Cellebrite employs more than 500 people and has offices in Israel, the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Singapore and the U.K., according to its website. Founded in 1999, Cellebrite was bought by Sun Corp. in 2007.
Before entering the world of high-tech cybersecurity with its Cellebrite purchase, Sun Corp., established in 1971, made a name for itself as a manufacturer and vendor of electronic equipment, notably digital pachinko machines — a type of pinball game popular throughout Japan. It has also produced video games.
(c) 2016, Bloomberg · Aleksandra Gjorgievska
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