A new report from says that law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan believe that iOS 18 includes a “new security feature that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time.” After an iPhone reboots, users generally have to enter their passcode again.Law enforcement officials are concerned that this makes iPhones stored for forensic explanation harder to unlock.A document being distributed among law enforcement officials and obtained by explains the change.
writes: After a reboot, the iPhones in question entered the Before First Unlock (BFU) state.“This made unlocking them significantly harder, and according to the document, cracking them is now not possible with current tooling,” the report explains.Law enforcement officials say that this has affected iPhones that were in Airplane Mode and one that was inside a farday box.
Apple has not commented on this report or law enforcement document.It’s unclear if this is a bug in iOS 18, a deliberate feature change by Apple, confusion among law enforcement officials, or a combination of all the above.Matthew Green, a cryptographer and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, told that the law enforcement theory iPhones are secretly communicating with each other is “utterly bizarre and amazing.” Green, however, said he finds the hypothesis to be “deeply suspect.” You can read the full report on the website.
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