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Apple’s new iPhone software comes with a new security feature that reboots the phone if it hasn’t been unlocked for 72 hours, according to security researchers.
last week, 404 media reported Law enforcement officers and forensic experts were concerned that some iPhones were rebooting themselves under mysterious circumstances, making it difficult for them to access the devices and extract data. Quoted by security researchers, 404 Media I mentioned it later iOS 18 has a new “Inactivity Restart” feature that forced devices to restart.
Now we know exactly how long it takes for this feature to start working.
On Wednesday, Jeska Klassen, a researcher at the Hasso Plattner Institute and one of the first security experts to discover this new feature, said, I posted a video View the Inactivity Restart feature. The video shows that an iPhone that was left alone without being unlocked reboots itself after 72 hours.
Magnet Forensics, a company that provides digital forensics products including the iPhone and Android data mining tool Graykey, Also confirmed The timer for this feature is 72 hours.
The Inactivity Restart feature effectively puts iPhones in a more secure state by locking the user’s encryption keys in the iPhone’s Secure Area chip.
“Even if thieves leave your iPhone turned on for a long time, they won’t be able to unlock it using older, cheaper forensic tools,” Klassen wrote on X. “While inactive reboots make it more difficult for law enforcement to obtain data from criminals’ devices, this will not stop them completely. Three days are still enough to coordinate steps with professional analysts.
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iPhones have two different states that can affect the ability of law enforcement, forensic experts, or hackers to unlock them by forcing the user’s passcode, or to extract data by exploiting security flaws in the iPhone’s software. These two states are “Before First Unlock” or BFU, and “After First Unlock” or AFU.
When an iPhone is in a BFU state, the user’s data on their iPhone is completely encrypted and is almost impossible to access, unless the person trying to get in knows the user’s passcode. On the other hand, in the case of AFU, some data is not encrypted and may be easier to extract by some hardware forensics tools – even if the phone is locked.
An iPhone security researcher who uses Tihmstar told TechCrunch that iPhones in these two cases are also referred to as “hot” or “cold” devices.
Many forensic companies focus on devices that are “hot” in the case of AFU, because at some point the user entered their correct passcode, which is stored in the iPhone’s secure area memory, Teamstar said. In contrast, “cold” devices are much more difficult to downgrade because their memory cannot be easily extracted by simply rebooting the phone.
For years, Apple has added new security features that law enforcement has opposed and spoken out against, arguing that they make their job more difficult. In 2016, the FBI sued Apple in an attempt to force the company to build a backdoor to unlock a mass shooter’s iPhone. Finally, Australian startup Azimuth Security The FBI helped Phone hacking.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
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