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Apple Is Testing a Feature That Could Kill Police iPhone Unlockers (vice.com)
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for Motherboard: On Monday, at its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple teased the upcoming release of the iPhone's operating system, iOS 12. Among its most anticipated features are group FaceTime, Animoji, and a ruler app. But iOS 12's killer feature might be something that's been rumored for a while and wasn't discussed at Apple's event. It's called USB Restricted Mode, and Apple has been including it in some of the iOS beta releases since iOS 11.3.
The feature essentially forces users to unlock the iPhone with the passcode when connecting it to a USB accessory everytime the phone has not been unlocked for one hour. That includes the iPhone unlocking devices that companies such as Cellebrite or GrayShift make, which police departments all over the world use to hack into seized iPhones. "That pretty much kills [GrayShift's product] GrayKey and Cellebrite," Ryan Duff, a security researcher who has studied iPhone and is Director of Cyber Solutions at Point3 Security, told Motherboard in an online chat. "If it actually does what it says and doesn't let ANY type of data connection happen until it's unlocked, then yes. You can't exploit the device if you can't communicate with it."
The feature essentially forces users to unlock the iPhone with the passcode when connecting it to a USB accessory everytime the phone has not been unlocked for one hour. That includes the iPhone unlocking devices that companies such as Cellebrite or GrayShift make, which police departments all over the world use to hack into seized iPhones. "That pretty much kills [GrayShift's product] GrayKey and Cellebrite," Ryan Duff, a security researcher who has studied iPhone and is Director of Cyber Solutions at Point3 Security, told Motherboard in an online chat. "If it actually does what it says and doesn't let ANY type of data connection happen until it's unlocked, then yes. You can't exploit the device if you can't communicate with it."
I admit, I don't know exactly how GrayKey and Cellebrite work. However, if viewed from proper access control and privileges point of view, it shouldn't be possible to siphon the kinds of data (e.g. contacts, calls) that it is reportedly capable of doing.
So, could someone explain to me why they went with a solution that still leaves 1 hour window of opportunity to compromise a phone instead of fixing, what I guess are overly permissive privileges within the file system?
"Apple Is Testing a Feature That Could Kill Police iPhone Unlockers. " Um, the feature you describe will prevent current unlockers from working on an iPhone with the feature enabled. But it's not going to kill the unlocker. That conjures up imagery of something that will detect the unlocker and fire high voltage into it or some such.
I guess my 4-digit pin kills anyone who tries to casually snoop at my phone.
** I have not looked to make sure I was commenting on the intended story.
I am not left-handed, either!
What if your left thumb unlocked your phone and your right thumb wiped the device invisibly? The criminal could never know, you deniability and the police will be too scared to tap your dead finger to the phone.
Or what if left-right-left unlocked and left-right-right wiped?
Image the underlying flash, wire to wire. Boot the image on a new phone, cache writes to delta, attempt unlock till limit. Reboot state, clear delta, attempt next set of codes, get combo. 6 digit passcodes are the norm and useless against this attack. USB access be damned.
Does anybody know? What was the holdup? Certainly it couldn't have been difficult to implement, could it?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Sounds pretty much like it works in Android
and in china they will have an unlock code for government.
It seems like killing police for unlocking an iPhone would get Apple in trouble.
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I take it that the USB device the phone is connected to can not be just any USB device but one that the phone knows?
-- Cheers!
If they really wanted to kill unlockers they should have included capacitor based USB Killer.
Which is why the article has a screenshot showing a switch to disable it?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
My guess is they break their MFI program parameters with it.
In Soviet America it's illegal to sell a secure cellphone to civilians.
It has to be implemented most likely at a very low level in the hardware or iOS or it might be circumvented somehow via software.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That requires the phone to be unlocked when the police seize it though.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Users observed during testing would press the dongle in wrong and damage the delicate notch.
Better cartoons got tested by artists so users will now know how to hold the dongle.
The better cartoons and artwork is now ready so the product is now ready for average users.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
With this feature both scenario 2 and 3 are the same. This feature can be turned off so scenario 1 is a choice.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
What I want is to have encrypted VMs on my phone, with different fingerprints unlocking different VMs. Or perhaps different levels of unlocking. Unlocking the phone doesn't have to be a binary operation.
Something like this would also be great for handing my phone to my son so that he can play games, while locking him out of my email and such.
While they're at it, why not also fix the vulnerability that the unlockers exploit?
IF Apple implements this, and I'm sure every state & federal agency will be pushing back against this, then Cellebrite and Grayshift will have a problem and you just imagine all the tears users won't be shedding if Apple goes ahead with this.
Apple should just make the USB lock come on one hour after the last unlock-via-passcode event.
The vast majority of my phone unlocks are via fingerprint/TouchID, and these should not count.
I enter the passcode on my iPhone:
* After a reboot
* When my thumb is damp and won't read
* When installing an update
If it works this way, my phone will require a passcode for USB access... essentially all the time.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Dear AC Asshole.
I have relayed your suggestion to the "Geniuses" at the Apple store. The same ones who told be the phone could not be recovered.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Wait, what? iPhones are going to come with a USB port?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
There are notches at 1cm intervals along the casing? Or, for American models, 1 cm on the intermediate edge and 1in on the long edge?
By the six balls of Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the donkey, just how incompetent are Apple users?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"