Apple Releases iOS 11.4.1, Blocks Passcode Cracking Tools Used By Police (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple today released iOS 11.4.1, and while most of us are already looking ahead to all the new stuff coming in iOS 12, this small update contains an important new security feature: USB Restricted Mode. Apple has added protections against the USB devices being used by law enforcement and private companies that connect over Lightning to crack an iPhone's passcode and evade Apple's usual encryption safeguards.

If you go to Settings and check under Face ID (or Touch ID) & Passcode, you'll see a new toggle for USB Accessories. By default, the switch is off. This means that once your iPhone or iPad has been locked for over an hour straight, iOS will no longer allow USB accessories to connect to the device -- shutting out cracking tools like GrayKey as a result. If you've got accessories that you want to continue working after your iPhone has been sitting locked for awhile, you can toggle the option on to remove the hour limit. Apple's wording is a bit confusing. You should leave the toggle disabled if you want your iPhone to be most secure.

Comments

Re: Except: China

[saloomy]

Apple agreed to store Chinese data in China. This allows China to subpoena Apple for the data of its citizens.

But, Apple has a modus operandi to process as much data on the phone as possible, and encrypt with user-held decryption keys what it stores on its servers. They didn't generate and give China a special master key or the like. Whatever you can say about them, within the confines of the various bodies of law they operate it, they seem to push for the most privacy-focused solution to privacy challenges.

Very probably

[SuperKendall]

Is there a way to bypass the one-hour wait feature and tell the phone to immediately disable the USB

There is already the button press combo to force a passcode be required to unlock vs. a fingerprint or FaceID, I imagine that would also trigger the USB lock.

Re:Serious question:

[CaptainDork]

Why in simple hell is a question modded down?

I don't have an agenda. I just want to know why iPhones are the story and no other phones are, apparently, a concern.

And I ended it politely.

Re:Serious question:

[Arkham]

Why in simple hell is a question modded down?

I don't have an agenda. I just want to know why iPhones are the story and no other phones are, apparently, a concern.

And I ended it politely.

Because many, many Android phones have unpatched vulnerabilities.

https://www.cnet.com/news/repo...
https://techtoday.io/71-of-and...

There are lots of articles. The number varies between 50% and 90% of phones. Even if the manufacturer by some miracle decides to update the phone, the carrier probably won't. Only a few phones (mostly Google devices) get updates direct from Google, and carriers don't generally push those because they get incentives from HTC, Samsung etc to sell the other phones instead.

Re:its not about security

[andymadigan]

Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Erase Data [toggle]

Description: "Erase all data on this iPhone after 10 failed passcode attempts"

WTF are you talking about? My iPad had this setting disabled, and somehow got into a state where it wouldn't accept the passcode while charging over lightning (thus resulting in many 'failed passcode attempts'). It eventually locked me out for an hour after multiple failed attempts, but it never erased the device. The lock-out is temporary, no data was lost.

Oh, and backup isn't a paid service. My iPhone and iPad are both backed up to iCloud, and (combined) they're using less than 1GB of the free 5GB plan. If you really want a full backup of the phone (including the binaries of the apps), then you have to backup to a computer using iTunes, also free.

I do wish iOS had the capability to backup directly to a NAS (with encryption) like Time Machine, but I doubt Android has that capability either.