"There is an apparently new iOS 18 security feature that reboots iPhones that haven’t been unlocked in a few days, frustrating police by making it harder to break into suspects’ iPhones
…
Apple added “inactivity reboot” code in iOS 18.1 that triggers iPhones to restart after they’ve been locked for four days"
I don’t get it… Why is rebooting a locked phone more secure?
Every time the phone reboots, it disables biometric unlocking until the correct pin is entered.
Most hacking tools that police have access to take advantage of the weaker security found in the biometric unlock mode.
By randomly restarting, the phone’s storage stays fully encrypted until the correct pin or passcode is entered, which is far more secure as it takes either a brute force attack to guess the correct pin, or a court order compelling the person to provide the pin or passcode.
Fun fact, in the United States, a pin or passcode is considered private property, and the police can’t legally force you to provide it without a warrant. However, your face or fingerprints are not considered private property, and they can and have used biometrics to unlock phones without user consent or a warrant before.
If you ever get stopped by the cops, make sure to reboot your phone so they have a harder time finding incriminating evidence.
Is it hard to get a court order? I can’t imagine it would be much harder than a house warrant.
A court order doesnt magically give them the unlock code, the court can hold a person in contempt for refusing to give it in some instances but not indefinitely.
Well surely the sentence for contempt of court must be fairly high, otherwise it would be a pretty useless law at all.
Well 4 years was the longest i could find, but usually they are more like 1-30 day sentences and the 4 year one is an outlier.
Chelsea Manning was held for 62 days for refusing to reveal a source, so not a password but similar reason for the charge https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48223178
The spirit of the law seems to be that if its established the only reason to hold someone is a refusal to give information and its clear they will never comply, that alone is not justification for indefinitely detaining someone, but judges can interpret things how they want.
You don’t have to reboot it. You just have to click the main side button several times (10?). Which you can do by feel.
This disables biometrics, but doesn’t delete the decryption key in memory. This is sufficient to prevent being compelled to unlock with biometrics, but with the decryption key in memory, it is still possible to access data via an exploit. A full reboot deletes the decryption key until the user enters their pin.
You just have to click the main side button several times (10?).
5 times locks it.
I hope this gets added to Android.
Some do. Enable “auto restart” if your phone has it.
I believe this option just came to my Pixel 7 a few weeks back.
Android is already disabling fingerprint reader every 72 hours. So what’s the difference?
The encryption key of the device storage is kept in memory while in AFU state for practical reasons, you don’t want to wait for the encryption key to be generated everytime you unlock the device, then wait for apps to restart and sync their data.
A reboot will discard that key from memory and return the phone back in BFU state, making it much more difficult to extract data from a device.
https://blogs.dsu.edu/digforce/2023/08/23/bfu-and-afu-lock-states/
Its in GrapheneOS(an android custom ROM) if you’re that way inclined.
Sadly I can’t, need to keep the stock OS for work.
If you use your personal phone for work you can do with it whatever the hell you want, it’s your phone. If work requires you to do something they can give you a phone in which tondo that
My primary phone is a corporate phone, so no.
I use an eSIM to have my personal phone number and the work stuff is in a container.
Ah, I don’t use my personal phone for work stuff or my work phone for personal stuff. GrapheneOS also only supports Pixel phones.
Came here to say this
GrapheneOS is not a custom ROM
I get that it’s not actually ROM, but this is the normal term used. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distributions
This is a list of Android distributions, Android-based operating systems (OS) commonly referred to as Custom ROMs or Android ROMs, forked from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) without Google Play Services included officially in some or all markets, yet maintained independent coverage in notable Android-related sources.
Emphasis mine.
Wait I thought we were supposed to hate on iphones here.
Yeah, I debated whether to post it or not. = )
iPhones suck. This is still an objective improvement to them and currently an advantage over Android. Hatred and blind hatred aren’t the same.
GrapheneOS supports it.
That’s super cool! I guess I should’ve expected that. Still unfortunately means you need to be a Pixel owner and to have installed a non-default OS, which is an extreme minority of Android users – compared to iOS 18.1 blanketing every 12th-or-later-gen iPhone.
Yeah… I hope that it becomes a standard part of Android one day.
Broken clock… Twice a day… ya know
Last week it was theorized that iOS 18 would reboot after 24 hours if it lost connection from the internet. That would be even better, since it would fuck people trying to work around FindMy.
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Hopefully they’ve implemented it in a way that the phone can still get wiped before initial unlock.
Yeah, it will wipe if it’s locked. It wipes as soon as it gets the request from cloud. So immediately if it’s online, or if it’s unable to reach the internet, it wipes once it connects to a cellular or wifi network.
How do you mean trying to work around FindMy? Like phone thieves?
Thieves, authorities, crazy ex, anyone.
FindMy will allow you to remotely secure or wipe the device. But the device needs to be online to get that request to lock or wipe from iCloud.
Surely the user could just take out the SIM card and that would prevent it from ever connecting to the internet?
Sure it could connect over Wi-Fi still but the chances of it being next to a network it has connected to before are very slim.
What SIM card?
Yea, eSIM is starting to take over the contemporary phone market.
The last 3 generations of iPhone released in the US do not have physical SIM card slots at all.
Yeah, and a bunch of other manufacturers were quick to follow.
I’m still on the fence of whether or not this is a good thing. In this scenario, it’s a pro. Cops or crooks can’t remove a SIM if there is no physical SIM.
That’s my point. People try to keep stolen or confiscated phones from reaching the cloud. Many have proposed a faster auto-reboot for phones that aren’t online. Maybe reducing it from 72 hours to 12 or 24.
