U.S. law enforcement have the ability to unlock any iPhone, including the most recent models, thanks to a recent technological breakthrough at a U.S. government contractor, according to Forbes.

Cellebrite, an Israel-based data extraction company that has long been believed to be behind technology that enabled the FBI to crack iPhone encryption, reportedly can bypass security protocols on all iPhone devices running iOS 11—including the iPhone X.

The breakthrough reportedly came in the last few months and the company has been advertising its new capabilities to law enforcement agencies around the world. In the company’s own literature, it notes that it can perform “advanced unlocking and extraction services” on devices including iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, iPad Pro and iPod touch, running iOS 5 to iOS 11.

Cellebrite can allegedly unlock the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X, the two newest models of Apple’s smartphone. Forbes reported the Department of Homeland Security has already likely used the technology to extract data from an iPhone X.

While the details of the technology used to crack the iPhone are sparse, Cellebrite can allegedly “determine or disable the PIN, pattern, password screen locks or passcodes on the latest Apple iOS and Google Android devices," according to the company’s own description.

Cellebrite briefly found itself at the center of the conversation regarding iPhone cracking following Apple’s refusal to help the FBI bypass security protocols on an iPhone belonging to the attacker who carried out a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, in 2015.

At the time, Apple insisted that cracking the encryption that protected the device would open a Pandora's box of sorts, allowing law enforcement to crack any iPhone and effectively rendering the company’s security measures useless.

The FBI eventually managed to crack the device by using a third-party vendor. Though the vendor was never disclosed, it was widely believed to have been Cellebrite. Former FBI Director James Comey suggested the agency may have paid more than $1.3 million to the unnamed company in order to break into the iPhone.

The development is potentially troubling for those who use the iPhone for its security features. The iPhone is widely considered the safest mainstream smartphone when it comes to privacy and security. Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 11, received praise from security researchers who said new features would make it harder to hack into devices.

Because the information as to how Cellebrite has managed to crack Apple’s security has not been made public, it’s currently not possible for Apple to reverse engineer the technique or patch against it.

Law enforcement has long pushed for companies like Apple to cooperate with requests to crack devices or provide a backdoor that allows agencies to reach past the protection and gain access to the information they deem necessary for an investigation. Encryption reportedly thwarted more than 7,000 attempts to gain access to data on mobile devices in 2017.

Such requests often betray a lack of understanding as to how encryption is intended to work. Communication via end-to-end encrypted apps, for example, require an encryption key to decode messages. Without the key, the messages would appear as a jumble of undecipherable characters.

For companies like Apple or Google or Facebook to include a backdoor or any sort of access to messages and other encrypted content that doesn’t require an encryption key to access would put at risk the entire premise of the protection; if encryption is cracked for one instance, the protection is no longer valid.

“I can’t build an access technology that only works with proper legal authorisation, or only for people with a particular citizenship or the proper morality. The technology just doesn’t work that way. If a backdoor exists, then anyone can exploit it,” Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and Electronic Frontier Foundation board member, wrote of encryption.

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