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Apple closes law enforcement loophole for the iPhone
Apple is about to make it much harder for law enforcement agencies to gain access to information on iPhones.
The company will include a new feature, called USB Restricted Mode, in a future update of its iOS software, which runs on iPhones and iPads.
The feature disables data transfer through the Lightning port one hour after a phone was last locked, preventing popular third-party hacking tools used by law enforcement from accessing the device. The port can still be used for charging.
[...] Reuters and The New York Times first reported that Apple (AAPL) had confirmed the new feature. Vice's Motherboard previously reported that Apple was testing the change.
Law enforcement officers have already been quoted opposing the security upgrade:
"If we go back to the situation where we again don't have access, now we know directly all the evidence we've lost and all the kids we can't put into a position of safety," said Chuck Cohen, who leads an Indiana State Police task force on internet crimes against children. The Indiana State Police said it unlocked 96 iPhones for various cases this year, each time with a warrant, using a $15,000 device it bought in March from a company called Grayshift.
[...] Hillar Moore, the district attorney in Baton Rouge, La., said his office had paid Cellebrite thousands of dollars to unlock iPhones in five cases since 2017, including an investigation into the hazing-related death of a fraternity pledge at Louisiana State University. He said the phones had yielded crucial information, and he was upset that Apple planned to close such a useful investigative avenue. "They are blatantly protecting criminal activity, and only under the guise of privacy for their clients," he said.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @08:38AM (1 child)
Soon law enforcement will begin carrying whatever tools they need to dump the data in the field. That will cover most iPhones since many will likely still be within the 1-hour window of locked-but-not-really mode. For the ones that are fully locked there will be some other workaround to deal with the majority of them such as other unknown exploits/tools or having the owner make their "one phone call" from the device in question so that it re-enters the 1-hour window. Even if the owner uses a station phone for their call they will still likely need to use their address book, which of course resets the window. There will still be cases in which the owner refuses to cooperate because they know about the 1-hour window or because they're dead or the device is damaged but the number of phones in that category will be well below 0.1% and depending on how severe the case is, agencies can subpoena records and use the case to politically push their back-doored encryption agenda.
I'm not an Apple fanboy but I'm also not a hater (typing this on my MacBook). That said, I'm disappointed with their response to this issue and their overall track record...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by terrab0t on Friday June 15 2018, @11:37AM
I was thinking the same thing. Unless I unlock it my Android phone will not activate USB access, only charge. It will remain connected after it locks, but the moment I disconnect it it disables USB access again until I unlock it.
This seems to be the ideal way to do it. Unless the police arrest me while my phone is connected to a PC and use that PC to sack it, they have no access unless I unlock it for them.