The iCloud account connected to Syed Rizwan Farook’s Apple iPhone 5C was reset in the days following the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, according to a motion filed Friday by federal prosecutors in U.S. District Court in Riverside and a statement issued by the FBI late Saturday night.

The account was reset by a San Bernardino County employee on Dec. 6 in an effort to gain access to information connected to Farook, according to the filing. Farook, who was a health inspector for the county, was issued the phone through his employer.

“FBI investigators worked cooperatively with the county of San Bernardino in order to exploit crucial data contained in the iCloud account associated with a county-issued iPhone that was assigned to the suspected terror suspect, Syed Rizwan Farook,” said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller in a news release.

There had been speculation that the county acted on its own to reset the password without the consent of the FBI and that the reset of the password was hindering retrieval of further data from the iPhone.

“Recent media reports have suggested that technicians in the county of San Bernardino independently conducted analysis,” Eimiller said. “This is not true.”

Late Friday night, the county’s Twitter account, @CountyWire, acknowledged that the password for the iCloud account had been reset.

“The county was working cooperatively with the FBI when it reset the iCloud password at the FBI’s request,” the tweet read.

County spokesman David Wert said in a phone conversation Saturday that the FBI approached county officials in an effort to retrieve information from Farook’s phone.

“Since the iPhone 5C was locked when investigators seized it during the lawful search on December 3rd,” Emiller said, “a logical next step was to obtain access to iCloud backups for the phone in order to obtain evidence related to the investigation in the days following the attack.”

It’s unknown whether further information could have been found had the iCloud password not been reset and the iPhone had been backed up, according to the FBI’s release.

“The last iCloud data backup of the iPhone 5C was 10/19 and, based on other evidence, investigators know that Syed Rizwan Farook had been using the phone after 10/19,” the statement reads. “It is unknown whether an additional iCloud backup of the phone after that date — if one had been technically possible — would have yielded any data.”

According to the court filing, technicians with both the FBI and Apple discussed suggestions to gain access.

“Indeed, after reviewing a number of suggestions to obtain the data from the subject device with Apple, technicians from both Apple and the FBI agreed that they were unable to identify any other methods — besides that which is now ordered by this court — that are feasible for gaining access to the currently inaccessible data on the subject device,” the document reads.

One of those suggestions “and their deficiencies” as noted in the document, was “to attempt an auto-backup of the subject device with the related iCloud account (which would not work in this case because neither the owner nor the government knew the password to the iCloud account, and the owner, in an attempt to gain access to some information in the hours after the attack, was able to reset the password remotely, but that had the effect of eliminating the possibility of an auto-backup).”

Friday’s filing was in response to Tuesday’s posting of an open letter on Apple’s website, where Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company has done everything “within our power and within the law” to assist the FBI in the investigation.

According to the document, Apple “has consistently complied with a significant number of orders issued pursuant to the All Writs Act to facilitate the execution of search warrants on Apple devices running earlier versions of iOS.” The iOS versions referenced are versions 8.0 and earlier.

“The FBI is proposing an unprecedented use of the All Writs Act of 1789 to justify an expansion of its authority,” Cook’s letter states. “If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data.”

The rest of the iCloud password doesn’t impact Apple’s ability to assist the FBI, Eimiller said.

“Even if the password had not been changed and Apple could have turned on the auto-backup and loaded it to the cloud, there might be information on the phone that would not be accessible without Apple’s assistance as required by the All Writs Act order, since the iCloud backup does not contain everything on an iPhone,” Emiller said.

Several calls on Saturday to Apple Inc. for comment went unanswered.

Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, opened fire at a training seminar in an Inland Regional Center conference room Dec. 2 killing 14 people and wounding 22 more. The two were armed with assault rifles when they shot at the crowd of about 70 people, most of whom were county employees. The FBI declared it the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

The Redlands couple was killed in a shootout with police hours after the Inland Regional Center attack.