Lockdown Mode is a sometimes overlooked feature of Apple devices that broadly make them harder to hack. A court record indicates the feature might be effective at stopping third parties unlocking someone's device. At least for now.

The FBI has been unable to access a Washington Post reporter’s seized iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode, a sometimes overlooked feature that makes iPhones broadly more secure, according to recently filed court records.

The court record shows what devices and data the FBI was able to ultimately access, and which devices it could not, after raiding the home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson, in January as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information. It also provides rare insight into the apparent effectiveness of Lockdown Mode, or at least how effective it might be before the FBI may try other techniques to access the device.

“Because the iPhone was in Lockdown mode, CART could not extract that device,” the court record reads, referring to the FBI’s Computer Analysis Response Team, a unit focused on performing forensic analyses of seized devices. The document is written by the government, and is opposing the return of Natanson’s devices.

Archive: http://archive.today/gfTg9

    • DarkFuture@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      4 hours ago

      Big claims require big proof. But I bet all you have is a hunch.

      I work alongside law enforcement. Part of my job involves helping detectives follow the instructions Apple/Google provide to them for downloading and unencrypting people’s phone data once a judge has given permission for them to request it from Apple/Google.

      Now, I’m not familiar with “Lockdown Mode”. Maybe that uses separate encryption to encrypt data stored on your phone that ISN’T cloud synced data. But even then, if that Lockdown Mode is software created by the manufacturer, then they could have the decryption algorithm to decrypt it and I wouldn’t trust it. I would only trust open-source encryption software, like Veracrypt.

      Bottom line is I’m here to guarantee you that if the data is synced with a cloud, which most people’s phone data is, it absolutely can be obtained by law enforcement.

      Not that it’s particularly relevant, but typically when law enforcement get into the data, it’s usually because they have reasonable suspicion and it’s usually kiddie porn or chat logs proving they were trying to meet up with underage individuals. And I’m here to tell you that shit is way more prevalent than I think most people realize.

    • Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      5 hours ago

      The big claim is that they couldn’t get into the reporter’s iPhone. You are right to demand proof before believing something so obviously made up.

      • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        4 hours ago

        Unless there’s an incredible amount of people “not in” on some universal secret, maths gonna maths, and physics gonna physics. Actual encryption works well in a proven way, computational power isn’t as infinite as some people think, and decent software implementations exists.

        Getting hold of anything properly encrypted with no access to the key still requires an incredible amount of computing power to brute force. Weak/bad implementations can leave enough info back to speed this up, malicious software can make use of an extra, undocumented encryption key, etc. but a decent implementation would not be easy to break in.

        Now, this does not say anything about what Apple actually do. They claim to have proper encryption, but with anything closed source, you only have your belief to back you up. But it’s not an extraordinary claim to say that this can be done competently. And Apple would have a good incentive in doing so: good PR, and no real downside for them since people happily unlock their phone to keep their software running and doing whatever it wants locally.