Technology

59884 readers

4811 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

986

Apple Quietly Introduced iPhone Reboot Code Which is Locking Out Cops (www.404media.co)

submitted 1 month ago by Stopthatgirl7 to c/technology

264 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Apple quietly introduced code into iOS 18.1 which reboots the device if it has not been unlocked for a period of time, reverting it to a state which improves the security of iPhones overall and is making it harder for police to break into the devices, according to multiple iPhone security experts.

On Thursday, 404 Media reported that law enforcement officials were freaking out that iPhones which had been stored for examination were mysteriously rebooting themselves. At the time the cause was unclear, with the officials only able to speculate why they were being locked out of the devices. Now a day later, the potential reason why is coming into view.

“Apple indeed added a feature called ‘inactivity reboot’ in iOS 18.1.,” Dr.-Ing. Jiska Classen, a research group leader at the Hasso Plattner Institute, tweeted after 404 Media published on Thursday along with screenshots that they presented as the relevant pieces of code.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is rebooting for a different reason. That auto reboot just kind assumes that the software on your phone sucks and it needs to reboot to stay running fast.

Graphene and now iOS auto reboot for security/privacy reasons.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The end result is the same though. First phone unlock is the one a bad actor can't get through.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's not the same.

On an iPhone it'll reboot after X hours of no use. That means it could go months without rebooting and the day after it's in police hands it reboots.

The feature you're talking about would need to be set to reboot every day at a specific time. Now you personally have to deal with that. Also until you unlock the phone as well there could be reduced functionality making it annoying.

Very different.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Not that hard to deal with honestly. Rebooting at night which I'm sleeping does not reduces any functionality, cuz I'm not using it. If someone needs to find me during the night he better call me cuz I won't wake up by notification which is also suppressed by DND. Yeah it is not design for security but a solution better than none.

Furthermore, rebooting the device periodically is good for security, especially for non-persistent fileless malware.