I’m so unused to seeing a corporation act in the interests of their customers explicitly counter to the wishes of law enforcement and the intelligence community that I’m racking my brain trying to think of ulterior motives that explain why Apple might have this.<p>Either way, on the surface, I’m quite pleased by this development.
This seems like it’ll just make police departments go to a judge more often alleging probable cause immediately, and judges might be more inclined to grant given the time pressure, thus paradoxically it might end up with more phones being opportunistically subject to warrants by the police as the justice system would be given less time for duebl consideration. A “ticking bomb” tends to produce anti civil liberty behavior on the authorities.<p>they should have a setting to disable it almost immediately.<p>I almost never us the data connection on my iPhone usb except for headphones, yet another downside of losing the audio jack :)
Google's Cached version if you're having issues accessing it:<p><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2018/05/ios-11-4-to-disable-usb-port-after-7-days-what-it-means-for-mobile-forensics/" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...</a>
One test I would carry out and well within the remit of geeks and enforcement - would be a femtocell/base station with a time update (which mobiles accept blindly if you let them). Forever keep connected devices in a Groundhog day.<p>That would certainly be the go to test for many I suspect, a tried and tested hack from days of old, brought into modern times.
A step in the right direction, but I'd like to see this interval reduced (12 hours? 1 hour?) or brought down completely (I should have the option to require an unlock before any connection is established). There's no reasonable use case where I would want to make a connection while not wanting to unlock the phone.
How is this different from how Android works, where you have to unlock your phone and explicitly tell it to connect every time you want to use a USB connection for anything other than charging?
Blog seems to be hugged to death, so I might be uninformed.<p>What exactly happens after the 7 days? My girlfriend's iPad got blocked on vacation (bluetooth keyboard in a bag causing random inputs). To get it fixed, we needed to connect to a computer. Would this mean that if you don't get to a computer within 7 days it would be essentially be bricked?
Maybe I missed this in the article, but does anyone know if this feature can be turned off? Or if it's enabled by default?<p>What happens in the scenario of a consumer having an old iOS device sitting around, they forget the passcode, but now can't reset it using iTunes?
The obvious flaw in a time-based lockout is that it needs a trusted measurement of the current time.<p>If law enforcement wants to bypass this, the obvious approach would be to just remove the battery (to remove power from any internal RTC chip) and put the device in a Faraday cage (to block external time signals like GPS and the cell network). Then the shutdown clock would literally stop ticking until they turn it on again.
Why 7 days? I'd like a feature to never allow any USB communication until I've unlocked my phone, and then to allow it only for as long as they remain continuously connected.<p>Or to activate this feature with 'Emergency Mode' (5 power button presses).
Can someone explain how it is better than android? When I plug in my android, only charging works. I need to unlock the phone and enable data to make the data connection work. There is never trust this computer prompt. I have to do this always, even when due to bad wire the connection is lost for a split second.<p>Some people mentioned that android never shipped this feature and that Apple is first, but it seems to me that android never had this problem in the first place.
There are Kiosk uses of iPads where this could be an issue. Often those devices are mounted 24/7 inside a secure housing and left on but communicate with external devices. Now someone will have to reset them once a week.<p>Edit: thanks for the clarification below. I had the implementation wrong in my head. And yes, I realize this is a fairly edge use case, just one that affects my industry.
The time deadline might have some unintended consequences. Maybe law enforcement will proactively image people's phones early knowing it will be harder later. eg you are stopped at the airport. A judge may give give quick search warrants since its "now or never".
I wish I could just disable the data connection permanently<p>> Restricted USB Mode requires an iPhone running 11.3 to be unlocked at least once every 7 days. Otherwise, the Lightning port will lock down to charge only mode. The iPhone or iPad will still charge, but it will no longer attempt to establish a data connection. Even the “Trust this computer?” prompt will not be displayed once the device is connected to the computer
I wonder how iOS keeps track of the 7 days in question.<p>For an iOS device still connected to the internet or to a mobile phone network, I presume it will periodically make an NTP request or get the date/time from the mobile phone carrier, to adjust its clock. What if those requests are MITM'ed?
Is it known how those greykey devices even work? AFAIK iOS blocks many consecutive attempts to enter pin, so brute force would take too much time. It seems that greykey device can bypass this restriction using USB. Why Apple didn't just patch this vulnerability instead of disabling USB?
I fear this is really only going to have the reverse effect, instead of carefully examining whether or not 4th Amndment protections apply, "Out of an abundance of caution", courts will immediately seize and decrypt your phone.<p>Not to nitpick, but I wish these things were opt-in. For instance, I don't really care if I've restarted my mac and have to use my password again to log in, I'd rather use my fingerprint. I just need to prevent casual attackers, there is _literally nothing_ on here that needs to be protected with fort-knox level security.
Two ideas:<p>What about paired hardware? Imagine buying an iPhone and pairing it with your charger and they share keys. Any other charger used would immediately wipe the phone. There could be settings to tweak this.<p>what about wiping the phone if it has not been logged into a certain amount of time with a certain password (not normal PIN)?<p>The current crop of phone busters completely bypasses the 10 wrong pin and wipe option. The idea is to immediately wipe the phone without using Find my iPhone (defeated with airplane mode).
Can I still kick the device into recovery mode with a cable after 7 days with this mode? Or would I have to unlock the device to re-enable recovery mode?
Say a user drops their phone in a desk drawer and goes on an 8 day hiking trip.<p>He/she comes back and can't remember their passcode. Is the phone now a brick?
To me, it feels like Apple is trying to figure out how GreyKey and Cellebrite are getting in - and patching every vector they can think of in the meantime. I suspect that if law enforcement agencies are suddenly told they have to unlock new Apple devices within 7 days of acquisition, Apple will find out and can infer that the exploits have (e.g.) something to do with USB accessory access.
Will this cause warrants to be rushed through and much more often? Just to get the phone unlocked in case something is in there, even if there may be no burden of proof. Better to overnight it to a facility with a tool to unlock it and sign off on a quick warrant.
Why seven days? How about 24 hours? Or even better if the device is locked I have to unlock it to use the port for anything besides charging (and it can then lock on its usual schedule)
This doesn't quite sound as amazing as a first look, because this is not a full "data connectivity" kill. Data connectivity is always required whenever people use headphones due to headphone jack removal.
i suspect this will be a net negative. now that law enforcement has a time limit, graybox sales will flourish, and law enforcement will access your phone ASAP before collecting other evidence. then the phone evidence itself will give them the clues they want and they’ll get the warrant after the fact. or the court may even be complicit and issue a warrant without enough supporting evidence due to the risk of evidence destruction.
this is why I will never use google pixel tho I will still be forced to use gmail, search, and Youtube because of its conveniences, hopefully in the future something new that comes out that has mathematical open source decentralized form of censorship-proof algorithms will come out
You could just pull the flash chip and image it. You would need to figure out how to get the key, but pulling the flash chip and reading it doesn't look too hard if you can use a heat gun. If you lived in Shenzhen you could go the market and buy a flash reader.<p>Strange Parts is youtube channel where the guy does this.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHP-OPXK2ig" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHP-OPXK2ig</a>
...<p>Every 6 days from point of collection:
Place phone in caged room.
Turn on your cell phone network interceptor device.
Set interceptor's network time to device collection time.
boot phone, await for it to update network time from cell interceptor.<p>...<p>So many edge cases/ways to defeat this that need to be handled.
I would like to read this article but, the website doesn't load. I guess it's not optimized to front page HN.<p>May I suggest to loadtest your website or article before posting it?<p><a href="https://ddostest.me/load-test/" rel="nofollow">https://ddostest.me/load-test/</a>