Thread

Cops Can Bypass iPhone's Automatic Reboot to Get into Locked Phones

287 points · 226 comments · speckx

Cider9986 · 1790869574 · focus · HN ↗
For those who don't know, automatic reboot restarts your device if you haven't unlocked it in a set amount of time. Cellebrite and other digital forensics companies are able to get into AFU devices much more often. The automatic reboot feature was first introduced by GrapheneOS and was later added to iOS and stock Pixels.
GrapheneOS's default is 18 hours and it can be set to between 10 minutes and 72 hours. iPhones and Stock pixels have it non customizable at 72 hours.
On GrapheneOS, for privacy and convenience, it's best to use a long random passphrase [1] for your primary unlock and then a fingerprint with a second factor pin as the secondary unlock. You enter the passphrase every time the device restarts.
If you're encountering someone that's going to seize your phone, try to restart/shut it down yourself so you don't have to trust the AFU protections.
[1] <a href="https://strongphrase.net" rel="nofollow">https://strongphrase.net give memorable ones which is cool.
1. dylan604 · 1790871117 · focus · HN ↗
  > On GrapheneOS, for privacy and convenience, it's best to use a long random passphrase
  Why do you call out just one OS? It's a good idea for any OS.
  1. Cider9986 · 1790872104 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, in fact on GrapheneOS it's less necessary and it's only necessary if you don't want to rely on the secure element rate limiting.
    GrapheneOS allows using a passphrase with more convenience because of the fingerprint plus second factor pin (I don't think you can just have a pin as a secondary unlock). You don't need to enter the passphrase every time you unlock with this setup, only when first starting up.
    The official opinion: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Agrapheneos%20passphrase%20rate%20limit&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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