Cops in Detroit are sending out a warning about what they suspect is a new security feature in iOS 18.
Cops in Detroit are freaked out about a wave of iPhones in their custody rebooting without warning. The reboot makes it much harder for law enforcement to search the devices for evidence. 404 Media broke the story based on documents it acquired that appear to be written by cops in Detroit, Michigan. The documents include a memo describing the problem and warning other law enforcement officials to watch out for the problem. “The purpose of this notice is to spread awareness of a situation involving iPhones, which is causing iPhone devices to reboot in a short amount of time (observations are possibly within 24 hours) when removed from a cellular network,” the document said. “If the iPhone was in the After First Unlock (AFU) state, the device returns to a Before First Unlock (BFU) state after the reboot. This can be very detrimental to the acquisition of digital evidence from devices that are not supported in any state outside of AFU.” The lock state of an iPhone determines how easy it is for cops to use third-party tools like Cellebrite to break in and root around. When an iPhone boots after a loss of power, it’s in BFU and much harder to get into. Cops can still brute force their way into the phone, but it’s harder and the data they can extract is limited.
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