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Police Freak Out at iPhones Mysteriously Rebooting Themselves, Locking Cops Out (404media.co) 129

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
Law enforcement officers are warning other officials and forensic experts that iPhones which have been stored securely for forensic examination are somehow rebooting themselves, returning the devices to a state that makes them much harder to unlock, 404 Media is reporting, citing a law enforcement document it obtained. From the report: The exact reason for the reboots is unclear, but the document authors, who appear to be law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time. After being rebooted, iPhones are generally more secure against tools that aim to crack the password of and take data from the phone.

"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 reads. Apple did not provide a response on whether it introduced such an update in time for publication.
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Police Freak Out at iPhones Mysteriously Rebooting Themselves, Locking Cops Out More

Police Freak Out at iPhones Mysteriously Rebooting Themselves, Locking Cops Out

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  • Theft protection (Score:5, Informative)

    by internetd00du ( 7659518 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @05:21AM (#64932509)

    I recently got notifications on my Pixel about enabling theft protection features that lock the screen if there's a suspected snatch of the phone. Plus another setting that will lock the phone if it goes offline. Seems reasonable to me.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      I suspect the issue is less "rebooting" and more "iOS updates by itself"

      That's the first feature I turn off. Reason being I don't want the fricken phone rebooting on me because I work from like 11pm to 8am and every stupid decide in the world decides the best time to reboot is 2AM.

      • Re:Theft protection (Score:4, Informative)

        by Mascot ( 120795 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @07:41AM (#64932597)

        I have a somewhat similar issue with my smart watch. It runs a backup to the phone, which then further backs that up into the cloud. The problem is, they designed it with "no one ever turns off their devices" in mind, so it will only run a backup in the middle of the night. Which is when both my phone and watch are shut off. There's no way to trigger the backup manually. So I either leave both on overnight once in a while, or live with "watch not backed up in over 7 days!" warnings. Sigh.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        >I suspect the issue is less "rebooting" and more "iOS updates by itself"

        With no connectivity? The timing would be unlikely, cops getting a phone after an update had been downloaded, but before it was installed. But it's not clear that even that is sufficient. Apple says "When an update is available, iPhone downloads and installs the update overnight while charging and connected to Wi-Fi. You're notified before an update is installed."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by flink ( 18449 )

        The OS can't update itself if it's in a Faraday cage. The cops isolate a confiscated phone from the cell network to prevent remote wiping.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I believe iOS tries to learn your activity schedule so will perform the reboot at your convenience - which can be immediately, 2AM or when it decides you're normally idle. And the 2AM ones you schedule require your password.

        It also has to be plugged in before it does the update - I've missed many 2AM reboots because it isn't plugged in at all.

        But anyhow, these phones are completely disconnected - they're even rebooting when in a faraday cage, so they're not getting any update the whole time. After all, the

    • Yes, but i learned that it isn't enabled by default.

      I had to manually enable it on my Pixel 6.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Pixel devices also have a lockdown mode, usually accessible by holding the power button down. That disables biometric unlock.

      There is also a panic mode that is activated by rapidly pressing the power button 5 times. You can configure it to do things like start recording video, text emergency contacts, or call the emergency services.

    • Re:Theft protection (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sjames ( 1099 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @09:24AM (#64932775) Homepage Journal

      What I really want is a voice command "Hey Google, lockdown" where it locks the screen and only accepts the PIN to unlock.

      • where it locks the screen and only accepts the PIN to unlock.

        as was pointed out ... at least a decade ago, maybe closer to two decades : https://xkcd.com/538 [xkcd.com]

        Personally, I wouldn't hit the person with the wrench. Too much chance of accidentally killing them - which is insufficiently profitable.

        I'd use the wrench (particularly if it's a "combination" wrench with a "ring" part of about 13~15mm to break each of the finger joints in sequence from tip to hand. So that's 12 to 16 agonies before we start on the f

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          It's not meant to defeat a determined attacker not concerned with the law. It's meant to deter nosy cops that want to turn a traffic stop into a lot more. Courts have ruled that the 5th covers entering your pin but not pressing your finger on the pad to be read or using your face to unlock.

          They MIGHT threaten the PIN out of someone, but that will tend to blow back on them in court (both as prosecution and later as civil defendant).

          It might also have value against somewhat opportunistic criminals that don't

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Seems reasonable to me.

      Same here. Essentially applies to all moving of the phone not authorized by its owner. Remember that on the technological side, the police is an _attacker_.

    • I got the notice too on my Samsung. However I was given a choice of which features to enable. It wasn't automatic.

  • Turn your phone off at the border (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @05:23AM (#64932511)

    Cops have tools to scan a phone's RAM. They can read the memory of active apps and possibly use the information to crack the device.

    Always turn your phone off when going through customs or in any other scenario where it might be confiscated and searched.

    • What about when they say it should be on so they can verify it or check it actually is a phone or laptop?

      • Re: Turn your phone off at the border (Score:5, Insightful)

        by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @05:47AM (#64932519)

        What about when they say it should be on so they can verify it or check it actually is a phone or laptop?

        Thats what X-ray machines are for.

        Never really quite understood the policy of “smash buttons until it makes lights” Neanderthal mentality with this kind of security validation. That’s a fucking bomb if it’s not a phone or laptop. Ask the bomb squad if they “power on” the bomb first to make sure it’s a bomb and not a phone.

        • If i ever travel to america which may be next month for the first time, i just gonna leave my phone at home seems dangerous. I dont need a phone for 10 days anyway.

          • Re: Turn your phone off at the border (Score:5, Informative)

            by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @06:14AM (#64932531)

            I wouldn't travel without a phone. What if you're stranded middle nowhere and need to call for a taxi? Or maybe you need to use the airline app to check some details or perform check-in. If you are concerned with a police search, get a burner phone. My local second-hand shop has iphone 7 starting 70 €, or older Samsung Galaxy for 50 €.

            • What if you're stranded middle nowhere and need to call for a taxi?

              You and I have different understandings of "middle of nowhere". Mine starts at "5 hours walking until you get to a phone signal". What is yours?

              Or maybe you need to use the airline app to check some details or perform check-in.

              On the way out, you do your "check in" from home, where you're leaving your phone. On the way back, you use your hotel's "business centre" (if on Work's bill) or an Internet cafe. See also, ink-on-paper for passwords.

          • Most people would find it really difficult being without a phone for 1 day. Let alone 10 days in a foreign country.

            Personally, I'd do what others have suggested, take a cheap burner phone and put in your SIM card. If you are on eSIM, then just get a temporary SIM and input the numbers for your friends / family / work colleagues in case of an emergency.

            • A new reality show. Just like the 70s and 80s! Find yourself out of a foreign country with nary a dumb flip phone. Hint: You may interact with humans in real time.
              • You'd need to filter out those countries where more than a few percent of the people in $HOME COUNTRY$ speak the language in $DESTINATION COUNTRY" and vice versa. Preferably where they use different writing systems too - say Devangari and Cyrillic.

        • That’s a fucking bomb if it’s not a phone or laptop.

          They assume the more likely option of drug smuggling. You'd have to remove components to make space so it won't boot.

          • That’s a fucking bomb if it’s not a phone or laptop.

            They assume the more likely option of drug smuggling. You'd have to remove components to make space so it won't boot.

            You're talking about the Bendgate industry who hardly has room for a headphone jack now. The hell they gonna stuff in the average smartphone footprint that a drug dog couldn’t find, no technology needed? Two joints and a shot of 190-proof regret?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by flink ( 18449 )

          They want to make sure that you didn't replace the battery with plastic explosives, which would look identical on x-ray.. Kinda niche, but that's security theatre for you.

          • The Mossad have recently proven that technique of detection to be limited at best.

          • which would look identical on x-ray

            Which is kind-of why, for a decade and a bit, airports all over the world (well, Europe, Africa, Canada, Russia, Arabia ; I don't know about America) have been replacing X-ray (only) machines with ones that incorporate MR and/ or other technologies alongside the X-ray system, and can overlay images from the different sensors with the X-rays.

            Then there's the THz scanning systems that can pick up surface-conductance of materials (clothing, skin, conducting layers in your el

        • It's a holdover from the early days of TSA when the FBI was worried about laptops stuffed with C4 instead of silicon. Naturally, TSA utterly failed to detect any of it, but maybe they'll be one of the deserving departments on the chopping block in a couple of months.

      • You press the Power button like the police could do by themselves, then leave it like that. If it boots to the login manager, it is a functional device.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Teun ( 17872 )
          Uhh, you could have replaced the standard battery with something nasty plus a tiny battery to allow booting and running for a few minutes...

      • What about when they say it should be on so they can verify it or check it actually is a phone or laptop?

        That's for getting ON the plane.

        Border searches are done when you get OFF the plane.

        TSA != CPB

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Depends. The US maintains customs posts in other countries so they can screen people before they ever get on the plane.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Teun ( 17872 )
        Going to the US from Europe requires you to go through a US mandated security check before boarding.
        A few years ago they picked out my 6 y/o laptop because a screw was missing, they suggested I potentially hid something inside.
        Only after appealing to a supervisor who eventually concluded a missing screw on an old laptop was nothing unusual could I board including the laptop.
        And yes, of course it was X-rayed.
    • That kind of technical operation, if even possible, would take a lot of time and skilled work hours, I highly doubt they use it on general public.

      • Almost any technical operation can be largely automated if you do it often enough. By now, they have dedicated hardware devices with custom probes that they just attach in a standard way to the main normal models of phone. They press a single button and it records everything they need to have.

    • Not much point for most folk, since border control can generally require you to turn on and unlock your phone. The only reason to take the extra step of turning off your phone is if it actually has something illegal on it, and you're willing to sacrifice your transit if you're asked to unlock it and refuse to. For everyone else who's *not* willing to sacrifice their transit and will comply with any lawful order, turning it off just takes up more of your time.

      "But what if I have nothing illegal on it and d

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Not much point for most folk, since border control can generally require you to turn on and unlock your phone.

        In police-states they can. Hence remember to never have anything potentially incriminating on your phone and remember that the laws in different countries are different. Oh, and if they connected anything to your phone, regard it as compromised and get a new one.

        • Right, so if you're travelling to the US for example where border security can require access to your phone and/or computer, you just have to decide beforehand if you're willing to abandon transit to avoid your phone being searched. If your answer to that is No, then there's no point powering it off to avoid search, since you already know you won't abandon transit in order to do so. That's all I was saying - the advice is useless for most people. Only useful for people who know ahead of time they *will* aba

    • Re:Turn your phone off at the border (Score:4, Informative)

      by Likes Microsoft ( 662147 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @08:20AM (#64932625) Homepage

      Always turn your phone off when going through customs or in any other scenario where it might be confiscated and searched.

      In the case of iPhone, this does the job without powering off: simply hold the volume-up and the right button simultaneously to get to the power-off/medical-id/SOS/911 screen. After that, the phone is locked (i.e., needing PIN to unlock). On iOS 18, swiping to the control panel screen and pressing the 0/1 power icon in the upper right corner also leaves the phone in a locked state.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by N1AK ( 864906 )
      If you actually have anything on your phone that you'd care about them getting access to then this isn't an effective solution. There is plenty of evidence of immigration staff forcing people to give them access to devices or social media accounts. Unless you're willing to refuse a demand from immigration with a reasonable probability of being detained in a foreign country when you do then turning the device off is not fully effective. The normal process when dealing with a scenario like that is to either w

    • The basic strategy for electronics is to clone them, then power down the original so it can't wipe itself. Once you have the virtual clone you can make as many secondary clones as you want to fiddle with and you can fake their inputs so they believe they're in whatever circumstances you want them to believe they're in.

      However, yeah, the latest Israeli tools probably just make the phone the cop's bitch.

      Your average tech cop is just plugging in the correct cable to the correct machine and following the step

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sosume ( 680416 )

      Unpopular opinion: cops should have the right to examine someone's phone, but only if they are incapacitated or suspected of a serious crime. We shouldn't take that away because some people are afraid of exposing their porn preferences or casual racism when taking a flight.

  • Have you tried turning it off and on again? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @05:59AM (#64932525)

    The police may be decrying it as a security feature (and it may be) but I'm inclined to say that it's probably just some kind of a self-repair protocol on the iPhone trying to revive the connection. I've been trying to reconnect for a day. It hasn't worked. Time for the ultimate fix.

    • Seems like a reasonable assumption.

      Or the Microsoft way.

    • The odd part is that phones that have been in policy custody for quite some time (and pre-iOS 18) have been spontaneously power cycling, thus putting them in the BFU (Before First Unlock) state, which is a much more secure and difficult state to crack than AFU (After First Unlock). You know, how that first unlock of your phone requires the pin, but subsequent can use face ID, fingerprint, etc.

      When law enforcement confiscate a phone they try to keep power to it so it never goes back to the BFU state, giving

  • hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time.

    Not quite getting this theory. If the phones just rebooted themselves after not being connected I'd get it, but what the above sentence is saying is that something is "telling nearby phones to reboot"... what is the something that's sending that message? It's not the cell towers, because that's disconnected according to the theory.

    • You have to assume alot here, but given the various spectrums and low power modes of communication an iPhone is capable of (NFC, bluetooth, whatever proprietary protocol apples airdrop and airtags uses) their Faraday cage may not have the appropriate shielding to counter all forms of radio communication.

      Also apple has devices that are capable of pushing updates to completely uninitialized and still inside the unopened box. so one would assume this does not require cellular and would be very possible to impl

    • hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time.

      Not quite getting this theory. If the phones just rebooted themselves after not being connected I'd get it, but what the above sentence is saying is that something is "telling nearby phones to reboot"... what is the something that's sending that message? It's not the cell towers, because that's disconnected according to the theory.

      The something telling phones to reboot is a line in the iOS 18 security update.

      I didn't read any implication that the force telling the phone to reboot was external to the phone itself.

  • It could be worse (Score:5, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @07:29AM (#64932585)

    They could be Israeli produced phones...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Funny not funny. And only Funny moderated comment. I think the story had more potential for humor.

  • Because you have no idea how long you will have access to the original data.

  • Probably a software update... (Score:4, Informative)

    by theNetImp ( 190602 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @09:11AM (#64932733)

    I know every time my iPhone software updates it requires the passcode. I am sure that's all this is, and the police are making a big deal out of something that has been a stock feature in iOS for years.

  • Novel idea (Score:2, Insightful)

    by eneville ( 745111 )

    Don't use your phone for criminal activities, then you've no concern.

    If you want to communicate with privacy, people were using PGP long before mobile phones.

    • No why didn't anyone think of that. Oh wait they did. Countless criminals are using various cryptographic secured software on their phones or PCs for communication. That's why it's so lucrative for police to get access to your unlocked device, it exposes not only your chats, but those of people with whom you communicate.

      Unless you're using PGP with a calculator and a pencil at some point an electronic device is susceptible to attack and countless major criminal rings have been taken down when their special

    • My dude, go give 'Three Felonies A Day' a read. Follow that up with 'You Have The Right To Remain Innocent.'

      Then lose your childish idea that criminal investigators are infallible paragons of truth.

      There's an awful lot of people who have been sentenced to death for crimes that they didn't commit. Just ask Project Innocence.

  • I'm curious about the types of crimes the cops expect to solve by cracking these phones. Which types of crimes make them work so hard to gain this access?

    I'd bet most of it is petty. Poor cops, its so much harder to be the man when there are electronic locks. Probably why they stick to beatdowns most of the time. Like xkcd come to life, "Beat him with this state issued club until he is defenseless, cuff him, then we'll just use Face ID."

  • Maybe they're using the geolocation feature to detect when it's inside of a police station, and then locking it.

    For ordinary regular folks (not police officers) there are a very limited number of reasons your phone would be inside a police station for extended periods of time, so maybe that's a trigger.

    I have no idea, just speculating.

  • I can understand where the Detroit investigators are coming from. After all, you know the old saying: If it quacks, think zombie apocalypse.

    More seriously, realizing that reboots seem to fix electronics, perhaps Apple and Google should implement reboots as an attempt to fix extended connectivity outages.

  • Iâ(TM)d love for it to be customizable - locked for more than x hours without being unlocked - reboot. No cell service for y hours, reboot. No wifi for z hours, reboot. No GPS signal⦠You get the idea⦠Good for making stolen devices less valuable to thieves. The fact that cops are difficult to tell apart from thieves in this context â" oh well. They already have exponential time back-off for incorrect unlock codes and a wipe after 10, so thatâ(TM)s good.

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