New Apple iOS Update Makes it Harder for Police and Thieves to Unlock iPhones
The latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system includes new code that could pose challenges for law enforcement officials and thieves trying to unlock iPhones.
According to a report by 404 Media, police officers have been encountering difficulties with iPhones rebooting themselves while being held for forensic examination. This phenomenon has been confirmed by security experts in a subsequent article. After the reboot, it becomes more challenging to unlock the devices using password-cracking tools.
Apple has not provided any immediate comments on this matter.
The reboot seems to occur on iPhones running iOS 18.1 that have remained locked for a specific period. Chris Wade, the founder of Corellium, a mobile analysis company, notes that iPhones appear to reboot after four days of being in a locked state.
Matthew Green, a cryptographer and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, has hailed this development as “a significant security enhancement” that is unlikely to cause inconvenience to users, except perhaps for law enforcement agencies.