Officers based in Detroit, Michigan, USA, warn other police officers about the alleged security of an iPhone, which leads to the spontaneous reboot of the device, which is stored for various examinations.
These iPhones are harder to hack using brute force password attacks, and Michigan police believe this is due to security restrictions Apple added in iOS 18.
The purpose of this notification is to spread information about the iPhone, which causes the iPhone to reboot within a short period of time when disconnected from the cellular network. If the iPhone was in First Unlocked (AFU) state, the device returns to Before First Unlocked (BFU) state after rebooting. This can be very detrimental to obtaining digital evidence from the device.
The iPhones running iOS 18.0 sacrificed in the lab are believed to have interacted with other iPhones that were running in AFU mode. This interaction sent a signal to the device to reboot after a significant amount of time had passed since the device was active or disconnected from the network.
— excerpt from a document found by 404 Media
The BFU mode differs from the AFU mode in that this iPhone has never been unlocked. In the case of AFU, there was at least one unlock using a password or Face ID.
It is easier for police to access the device in AFU mode using the Cellebrite device component.
The digital forensics lab that discovered the problem had several iPhones in AFU, including an iPhone in airplane mode and one in a Faraday box. Because the Faraday box blocks all electronic signals entering the device, it has no way to communicate with another iPhone running iOS 18.
Source: Iphones RU
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