The rumor mill is on.

A report by an Israeli newspaper, citing anonymous industry sources, pointed the finger at an Israeli company as the firm helping the FBI get inside the locked iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.

The paper, Yedioth Ahronoth, has been known to plug Israeli companies. But the stakes to uncover the unnamed “third party” working with the FBI are tremendously high. The newspaper report got picked up by Reuters in Tel Aviv and from there, rippled through the tech blogs.

So what’s the company? Its name is Cellebrite. It’s a regular government contractor and promotes itself as a mobile forensics software provider.

Is it really the company helping the FBI bypass the need for Apple’s special software to see inside this famous iPhone? We don’t know.

What we have is a lot of speculation — and a lot of skepticism.

The FBI’s response is that the agency cannot comment on the identity of the third party that’s assisting it. Cellebrite, too, has not commented to NPR and told other media little beyond the fact that it has worked with the Justice Department.

National security blogger Marcy Wheeler traced the bread crumbs of court documents filed in relation to the San Bernardino investigation and another federal investigation involving another locked iPhone to arrive at the suspicion that the FBI did ask Cellebrite to open the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook.

But just as much, this could be a brilliant publicity stunt by Cellebrite.

Stoking the rumors was a new contract, posted in the government database on Wednesday but dated March 21 — the day when the FBI announced it may have found a new solution — for services from Cellebrite USA. Forensics experts quickly sought to dispel this particular contract’s relevance, attributing it to software licensing renewal and pointing to the meager $15,278 price tag and given “principal place of performance” of Chicago, not San Bernardino.

At this time, no concrete evidence is pointing at Cellebrite. And we don’t know for sure what method the FBI is testing, either. Apple lawyers have indicated that they would like the government to disclose the method it would use to get inside Farook’s iPhone. But it’s also entirely possible the FBI will ask to keep both the vendor and the method classified.

What The Method Might Be

What we do know is that there have been several alternative ideas floating in the security community about how the FBI could overcome the iPhone security features preventing the agency from hooking the phone up to a computer and trying unlimited passcodes to find the right one without triggering a content wipeout.

In fact, FBI Director James Comey faced several questions about one technique in a congressional hearing. At the time, Comey testified that he was confident that government experts had considered all options before seeking a court order for Apple to write special software. Later, the FBI said the worldwide attention to the case had brought new alternatives to its attention and one of them, it decided to test.

Computer forensics researcher Jonathan Zdziarski argues that because the FBI has asked courts for only two weeks to test the viability of the new method, it’s likely not highly experimental. It’s also likely not something destructive, like the “decapping” method that relies on physically shaving off tiny layers of the microprocessor inside the phone to reveal a special code that would let investigators move the data and crack the passcode.

The idea that’s garnering the most focus is something called chip cloning, or mirroring or transplantation. The method entails de-soldering the so-called NAND flash chip (the phone’s version of hard drive) from the phone’s board and sticking it into a chip reader that saves all the data from the memory chip and about the chip (including things like its serial number) into a file that gets copied onto another similar chip.

Then, it works sort of like saving your place in a video game: Investigators could try some passcodes without the fear of the self-wipe function because they can reload, or re-image, the chip again and again.

“We don’t know yet that this is 100 percent doable, but we do know it’s feasible,” Zdziarski told NPR about the method in an interview last week, before the news of a third-party alternative broke.

He said the technology wasn’t tremendously expensive and, in fact, has been showcased in a video of a techie in a Chinese mall performing this procedure to help people get a memory upgrade for their iPhones.

NPR’s Aarti Shahani contributed to this report.

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This is the time of year when millions of travelers are making summer vacation plans. Analysts expected record numbers to book flights to international destinations.

Their outlook was so optimistic because global passenger traffic had shot up 7.1 percent in January, compared with last year, according to the International Air Transport Association. “The record load factor is a result of strong demand for our product,” Tony Tyler, CEO of the trade group, said in a statement earlier this month.

But then explosions hit in Brussels on Tuesday. At least 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded in attacks at Brussels’ main international airport and on a subway.

Travelers, once again, were the victims of barbarism. For now at least, that dims the outlook for travel and tourism.

All flights to and from the Belgian capital were canceled Tuesday, causing carriers to divert to other airports, or even other countries. For example, Delta Air Lines says it sent a Brussels-bound flight to Amsterdam. Eurocontrol says the Brussels’ Zaventem airport will remain closed on Wednesday.

Even airlines without direct flights into Brussels are feeling the turbulence; they have European code-share partners that got hit with disruptions. Deutsche Lufthansa said it canceled 11 flights to Brussels and Emirates Airline had to divert a flight to Duesseldorf, Germany.

All of that put a damper on the European tourism sector at a critical time: This Sunday is Easter, a peak travel period for Europeans enjoying a spring break.

Amid the jitters about travel disruptions, shares of Air France-KLM fell 4 percent Tuesday. American Airlines’ stock closed down 1.6 percent to $42.76. Delta and United also slipped more than 1 percent.

How long the dip will last is anyone’s guess. But travel stocks typically slip after a terrorist attack, and then bounce back as travelers recover from their initial shock.

For example, in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S, travel bookings plunged. But in subsequent years, they rose to record levels. That rebound pattern has held up in the aftermath of attacks on tourists and travelers in Bali (2002), Madrid (2004), London (2005) and Paris (2015).

It’s possible this latest attack could have a longer impact because terrorists for ISIS may be causing more alarm. Belgium is now at a Level 4 terror alert — the highest level.

Government officials around the world are reacting, too. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade changed its travel advisory for Belgium from “a high degree of caution” to “reconsider your need to travel.”

In this country, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says it is “stepping up security at its three major airports, the bridges and tunnels and Port Authority Bus Terminal.”

But within the aviation industry, officials continue to be optimistic about the long-term future because so many people want to travel.

Ben Baldanza, the former chief executive of Spirit Airlines, discussed the Brussels attack with NPR’s Morning Edition host Renee Montagne on Tuesday. Baldanza, who is now on the board of Icelandic low-cost carrier WOW Air, said he was confident air travel would bounce back as it always does.

The Brussels attacks “won’t affect in a meaningful way the long-term view of air travel,” Baldanza said. “People want to see the world; people want to engage in commerce and meet friends.”

His words were echoed by the International Air Transport group, which put out a statement. Aviation “brings the world together and fosters greater understanding of people and cultures. Those who commit terrorist acts know and fear this, and it is why air travel is so often a target,” chief executive Tyler said.

“But terrorists will never succeed in destroying the fundamental urge and right of people to travel, explore and learn about the world,” Tyler said.

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Andrew Grove, one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, who led Intel Corp. through the rise from a startup to a chip giant, died on Tuesday at the age of 79.

Intel confirmed the news of his death, saying that Grove played a key role in the move from memory chips to microprocessors, turning the company into the dominant brand that it is today as the chips helped ring in the age of the personal computer — and later finding their way into a wide variety of digital electronics like cameras, phones and home appliances.

Grove “combined the analytic approach of a scientist with an ability to engage others in honest and deep conversation, which sustained Intel’s success over a period that saw the rise of the personal computer, the Internet and Silicon Valley,” Intel Chairman Andy Bryant said in a statement.

Here’s how Fresh Air described Grove in 1996:

“Grove was born in Hungary and emigrated to the United States in 1956. He spoke very little English when he arrived. By 1960, Grove had received a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering degree from the City College of New York and in 1963, he received his Ph.D from the University of California, at Berkeley. Grove participated in the founding of Intel and became its president in 1979 and chief executive in 1987. He has written several articles and books, his newest book ‘Only the Paranoid Survive’ reveals some of the philosophy and strategy behind his success.”

Grove’s move, in fact, was an amazing personal story, detailed by the Venture Beat:

“As András Gróf growing up in Budapest, Hungary, Grove was born on September 2, 1936. He was nearly killed at age 4 when he contracted scarlet fever, and it gave him a life-long hearing disability. …

When he was eight, the Nazis occupied Hungary and deported nearly 500,000 Jews to concentration camps. His mother took on a false identity and was saved by friends. His father was taken to a labor camp. … Grove revealed this early history of his life in an interview with Time magazine, when he was named Man of the Year in 1997.

During the Hungarian Revolution, when he was 20 years old, he decided to flee across the Iron Curtain to Austria. He said he had to crawl through the mud across the border. He made his way to the United States in 1957, and he changed his name to Andrew S. Grove.”

And, according to the Business Insider, Steve Jobs used to call Grove his mentor, while Marc Andreessen often says that Grove’s the man who built Silicon Valley.

Grove and his wife, Eva, were married for 58 years and had two daughters and eight grandchildren, according to Intel.

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