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

287 points · 226 comments · speckx

  1. Cider9986 · · 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:&#x2F;&#x2F;strongphrase.net" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;strongphrase.net give memorable ones which is cool.

    1. iamnothere · · focus · HN ↗
      Never use a website to generate a password for something important like this. You can print out diceware passwords and roll dice.
      1. busssard · · focus · HN ↗
        you can play a round of scrabble and build the passphrase out of that
        1. iamnothere · · focus · HN ↗
          The entropy wouldn’t be very good compared to repeated dice rolls.
          1. busssard · · focus · HN ↗
            is there a comparison? i would assume depending on the limits you set yourself while playing scrabble (min 5letter words, selected for beauty) this can be alleviated
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