polity can no longer break iOS 12 on the phones iPhone, or iPad tablets, at least that's what the head of a US police department says, who says that data from Apple phones can no longer be accessed at the moment. Until now, the police in the US, and other areas of the globe, used devices called GrayKey to jailbreak iPhones, regardless of which version of iOS they were running, but starting with iOS 12 this has become almost impossible.
Police buy these iPhone-breaking devices for between $15.000 and $30.000, but iOS 12 has turned them into useless pieces of plastic, at least for phones with the latest updates. In the old versions, the police could extract data from the iPhone by removing the security system offered by Touch ID, Face ID, access codes, etc., the company behind this device having among its founders a former Apple security engineer.
Police can NO longer BREAK iOS 12 on iPhone
The police can still access a very limited set of information from iPhones running iOS 12, but the authorities are much more limited than they were before this version of iOS was actually launched. Before iOS 12 was released, it was said that the police could be completely blocked from accessing the data stored in the iPhone, and here this happened, to the joy of those who want to keep their information secret, for various reasons.
"That's a fairly accurate assessment as to what we have experienced. GrayKey can only do what's called a "partial extraction," sources from the forensic community said. That means police using the tool can only draw out unencrypted files and some metadata, such as file sizes and folder structures."
The police have been in situations like this before, GrayKey devices being blocked and prevented from accessing the data from the terminals, but the company that created the product managed to exceed the security measures imposed by Apple almost every time. It's hard to say if the same thing will happen now, or if the police will be permanently without the possibility to unlock iPhones, but it seems that Apple is struggling to make its products much more secure.
