FBI director says iPhone hack limited to older devices


via re/code:

It's a bit of a technological corner case, because the world has moved on to sixes," Comey said, in response to a question. "This doesn't work on sixes, doesn't work on a 5s. So we have a tool that works on a narrow slice of phones."

Good guess is that this involves Apple's Secure Enclave feature, which was introduced with the iPhone 5s.

Secure Enclave is a protected coprocessor that's required to unlock devices. The data itself is encrypted and tethered to its specific device. Essentially Secure Enclave should make it difficult to bypass security features such as password delays and data wipes since unlocking must be done on designated device.