John McAfee: 'I'll crack the San Bernardino Apple iPhone or I'll eat my shoe'

McAfee's dope-smoking hackers will have that iPhone cracked, lickety-split

John McAfee, the colourful chap who founded (and long since sold off) McAfee anti-virus, has offered to crack the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook - or eat his shoe if he fails.

The iPhone is at the centre of a row between the US authorities, who want Apple to break the security of the device so that they can access its data, and Apple, who argue that what they are being asked to do would compromise the security of every iPhone.

Publicity shy McAfee has therefore stepped in. In a blistering op-ed penned for Business Insider, McAfee takes Apple's side, but suggests that he and his team of hackers could crack the device's security quite easily, given a little time.

"No matter how you slice this pie, if the government succeeds in getting this backdoor, it will eventually get a backdoor into all encryption, and our world, as we know it, is over. In spite of the FBI's claim that it would protect the backdoor, we all know that's impossible," he wrote.

"There are bad apples everywhere, and there only needs to be one in the US government. Then a few million dollars, some beautiful women (or men), and a yacht trip to the Caribbean might be all it takes for our enemies to have full access to our secrets."

McAfee goes on to suggest that, ultimately, the problem is that the FBI does not have the manpower to do what he and his posse of weed smoking, pierced hackers could do in a short time.

"With all due respect to Tim Cook and Apple, I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet. These hackers attend Defcon in Las Vegas, and they are legends in their local hacking groups, such as HackMiami," he said.

"They are all prodigies with talents that defy normal human comprehension. About 75 per cent are social engineers. The remainder are hardcore coders. I would eat my shoe on the Neil Cavuto show if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone. This is a pure and simple fact.

"And why do the best hackers on the planet not work for the FBI? Because the FBI will not hire anyone with a 24-inch purple mohawk, 10-gauge ear piercings, and a tattooed face who demands to smoke weed while working, and won't work for less than $500,000 a year.

"Cyber science is not just something you can learn. It is an innate talent. A room full of Stanford computer science graduates cannot compete with a true hacker without even a high-school education," he said, before we all stopped making eye contact and started slowly moving away from him.

"So here is my offer to the FBI. I will, free of charge, decrypt the information on the San Bernardino phone with my team. We will primarily use social engineering, and it will take us three weeks," he added in closing.

"If you accept my offer you will not need to ask Apple to place a backdoor in its product, which would be the beginning of the end of America.

"If you doubt my credentials, Google 'cybersecurity legend' and see whose name is the only name that appears in the first 10 results out of more than a quarter of a million."