Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, shot and killed 14 people in December. The couple later died in a gun battle with police. The iPhone was recovered from their vehicle in the aftermath of the attack.
The ruling from U.S. Magistrate Sheri Pym requires Apple to provide "reasonable technical assistance" to the FBI, namely, software that can disable the security feature that erases data from the iPhone after too many unsuccessful attempts to unlock it.
Federal prosecutors told the court they could not access the phone used by Farook because they don’t know his passcode. With the security feature disabled, they can attempt as many combinations necessary to unlock the iPhone.
The iPhone in this case was not the property of Farook, but of his employer, San Bernardino County, which consented to the search.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said late Tuesday that the company would oppose the ruling.
In a message to customers published on Apple's website, he said: "We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack. For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only the well-meaning and law-abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data."
FBI director James Comey could not be immediately reached for comment.
Last week, Comey told a Senate panel that investigators still have not been able to unlock the encrypted cellphone of one of the terrorists who carried out the attack, which also left 20 others wounded.
"We still have one of those killer's phones that we haven't been able to open," Comey told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee during a hearing on threats to the homeland. "It's been over two months now. We are still working on it."
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