Technology

60082 readers

5235 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 2 years ago

MODERATORS

984

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

submitted 1 month ago by Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

264 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

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The police can engage in rubber-hose cryptanalysis. In many countries, it's legal to keep a suspect in prison indefinitely until they comply with a warrant requiring them to divulge encryption keys. And that's not to mention the countries where they'll do more than keep you in a decently-clean cell with three meals a day to, ahem, encourage you to divulge the password.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

That's what you need distress codes for.

Destruction of evidence is a much different crime.

I would suspect it'd no longer be legal to hold them indefinitely and instead at best get the max prison sentence for that crime instead.

A us law website says that's no more than 20y as the absolute max, and getting max would probably be hard if they don't have anything else on you.

You'd have to weigh that against what's on the device.

Also, even better if the distress code nukes the bad content, and then has a real 2nd profile that looks real, which makes it even harder to prove you used a distress code.

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

In most cases, destroying evidence will result in an adverse inference being drawn against the accused. It means that the court will assume that the evidence was incriminating which is why you destroyed it.