John McAfee, developer of the first commercial anti-virus program and current presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, has entered the debate surrounding Apple's refusal to create a backdoor that will enable the FBI to access the iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.
McAfee, who has been no stranger to controversy in recent years, has offered to unlock the iPhone in question free of charge. He says he'll be able to do this with his team of "prodigies" who possess "talents that defy normal human comprehension."
The way that the eccentric millionaire describes his crew makes them sound like they are straight out of 90's movie Hackers. McAfee says it's because of their "24-inch purple mohawk(s), 10-gauge ear piercings" and "tattooed face(s)" that these "best hackers on the planet" don't work for the FBI. They also demand half-a-million dollars a year and smoke weed while they work, apparently. He added that only 25 percent of the team are hardcore coders, the rest are social engineers.
If McAfee and his cyber A-team can't crack the iPhone, which, he says, will be achieved primarily using social engineering and take three weeks, he has offered to eat his shoe on the Neil Cavuto show.
In the op-ed article that McAfree wrote for Business Insider, he joins the rest of the tech world in supporting Tim Cook's decision to not make an iPhone backdoor for authorities to access the device. He claims that if this happens, it would be "the beginning of the end of the US as a world power."
McAfee finished off by saying that if the FBI doubted his ability to do the job, they just need to 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."