Technology

59378 readers

3199 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

985

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

submitted 6 days 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

[–] femtech@midwest.social 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Does that stop alarms from going off in the morning?

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 days ago

depends on your phone. at first encryption was done in an all-or-nothing style, so system startup couldn't complete without a first unlock. then android started using file based encryption, which was used selectively, encrypting certain things so that they are accessible without an unlock.

the best way to figure it out is to set a new alarm 10 minutes from now, reboot your phone manually, and see whether the alarm goes off

[–] umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago

I'm on S21FE and it does NOT.