Security is a constant arms race. When people celebrate good security news, I caution them from getting too excited because bad news is almost certainly soon to follow. Likewise, when people are demoralized by bad security news, I tell them not to lose hope because good news is almost certainly soon to follow.
Earlier this year news about a new smartphone cracking device called GrayKey broke. The device was advertised as being able to bypass the full-disk encryption utilized by iOS. But now it appears that iOS 12 renders GrayKey mostly useless again:
Now, though, Apple has put up what may be an insurmountable wall. Multiple sources familiar with the GrayKey tech tell Forbes the device can no longer break the passcodes of any iPhone running iOS 12 or above. On those devices, 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.
Within a few months I expect the manufacturer of the GrayKey device to announce an update that gets around iOS’s new protections and within a few months of that announcement I expect Apple to announce an update to iOS that renders GrayKey mostly useless again. But for the time being it appears that law enforcers’ resources for acquiring data from a properly secured iOS device are limited.