Technology

59370 readers

4378 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

983

Apple Quietly Introduced iPhone Reboot Code Which is Locking Out Cops (www.404media.co)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

241 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Apple quietly introduced code into iOS 18.1 which reboots the device if it has not been unlocked for a period of time, reverting it to a state which improves the security of iPhones overall and is making it harder for police to break into the devices, according to multiple iPhone security experts.

On Thursday, 404 Media reported that law enforcement officials were freaking out that iPhones which had been stored for examination were mysteriously rebooting themselves. At the time the cause was unclear, with the officials only able to speculate why they were being locked out of the devices. Now a day later, the potential reason why is coming into view.

“Apple indeed added a feature called ‘inactivity reboot’ in iOS 18.1.,” Dr.-Ing. Jiska Classen, a research group leader at the Hasso Plattner Institute, tweeted after 404 Media published on Thursday along with screenshots that they presented as the relevant pieces of code.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

As I understand it, even though after Reboot the OS looks like its in about the same state with the wallpaper and same password to unlock, the fact that it hasn't been unlocked yet means that certain attacks don't work as well. I don't know why specifically. I think it's because the attack may still work but doesn't reveal any sensitive data because it's just the ROM, wallpaper, sim, etc.