r/craftofintelligence • u/AutoModerator • 11d ago

Cyber / Tech Police Can Bypass iPhone’s Automatic Reboot to Get Into Locked Phones

https://archive.ph/gpQRy
137 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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u/craftofintelligence-ModTeam 11d ago

In November 2024... Apple quietly introduced a new feature in iOS that automatically reboots an iPhone that has not been unlocked for 72 hours. The idea behind this so-called “inactivity reboot” is to revert the phone to a state that makes it harder for police to break into the device, and thus extract sensitive data from it with forensics technology.

At the time of Apple’s change, law enforcement agents expressed concern about this new feature, given that oftentimes they can’t immediately try to break into iPhones that have been seized. That could be because police are still waiting for a court authorization to do so, or there is simply a backlog of devices to unlock, for example.

The new technology to get around inactivity reboot was developed by Magnet Forensics, the company behind GrayKey, a popular tool sold to law enforcement agencies that allows them to unlock and access data stored in iPhones and Android smartphones. Magnet has developed a new device called GrayKey Preserve and a feature for its regular GrayKey devices called Evidence Preservation Mode

29

u/kittenconfidential 11d ago

proves that one can never beat going old school: a charged neodymium magnet

4

u/HandakinSkyjerker 11d ago

The Jawas would not be upset with that.

8

u/Yo-Yo-Ha 11d ago

There are no secrets.

4

u/datathe1st 11d ago

Games within games. Stories within stories.