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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

"Nobody knows how?" They have a pretty plausible explanation in the back half of this very article:

> With iOS 12, Apple implemented a highly-anticipated change called “USB Restricted Mode.” This shuts off lightning port access on the iPhone if it hasn’t been unlocked by a user in the last hour. This was widely believed to be Apple’s solution to foil companies like GrayShift and Cellebrite but we don’t know for certain if that did the trick. Apple did not return our request for comment.

That would definitely do it. If Lightning goes down they cannot differentially backup/restore while attempting to guess the user's passcode.

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This was a well known feature. My guess is that Apple has now actually fixed the underlying issue that they were using.

Presumably patching whatever bug they were exploiting to avoid triggering the pin anti-bruteforcing feature Apple has had for nearly a decade...

During the iOS 12 betas it was reported that GrayKey was able to operate despite USB Restricted Mode. No information was given as to how though.

Reported by GrayKey itself. Nothing but marketing and PR to calm down customers while they were trying to find holes in the beta.

I doubt that

it's a pretty easy put up or shut up moment

Given that customers themselves had access to the beta, if that were true it would have been pretty easy for someone else with access to a GrayKey to refute that.

Or confirm it

There's not really any motivation for people with access to GrayKeys to confirm things that GrayKey has said. I would imagine that GrayShift frowns upon its clients talking publicly about GrayKey, so there'd have to actually be a good reason for someone to do so. "GrayShift told the truth" isn't a particularly good reason. But "GrayShift is lying" for many people would be a good enough reason to be worth speaking up. Heck, even an anonymous claim that GrayShift is lying would be something, but if anyone made such a claim, it wasn't publicized anywhere.

How do you backup your phone after you smash your screen?

That’s an event a backup is supposed go help with. You’re talking no longer about backup, but restore.

I'd wager this is a fairly fringe case that isn't worth the trade off. If you don't have a recent backup and absolutely need the data, take it to a third party repair shop/buy a screen from ifixit/data recovery lab, connect a new display, enter your PIN, back it up.

Same way you do if your drive fails in your computer. You don’t. You should make regular backups before anything happens to your device.

Somewhat tangentially, it’s actually a fairly smooth process to pull data off a MacBook when the keyboard/graphics/touchpad are dead.

A friend dropped a drink through his and it looked very dead. Turns out with a thunderbolt cable, another Mac, and his disk crypto password & he had easy access so his old disk. Don’t ask me how, but kudos Apple.

Disk encryption usually employs some form of PBKDF to turn the user’s passphrase into a key that’s usable for crypto. If you know the specific derivation function and the passphrase, unlocking the storage device on another machine is a matter of setting up the software. When both ends of this are Apple machines (one end: the damages machine running in target disk mode; other end: a working machine) the key derivation is taken care of by definition, requiring the user to merely enter the passphrase.

The question I have is how did he get the "dead" machine into target disk mode? That normally requires a reboot and a specific key chord on the keyboard.

I'd try sticking a USB keyboard into it. Hopefully USB ports aren't dead.

The older MacBooks with Firewire had target disk mode where you pressed T on boot, and the MacBook then acted as an external disk to the other host Mac. Very useful for backing stuff up!

No clue how you'd do that with the newer ones (dongles?) or with a dysfunctional keyboard though...

How do you backup your phone after you smash your screen?

Isn't that kind of like asking "How do you put your seat belt on after you've been knocked unconscious in a car accident?"

Isn't that more like trying to get your car fixed after a rock flies into your windshield?

No, getting your screen fixed would be like getting your car fixed.

Not at all. Of course it's good to back up a phone regularly, but even if you've done so it would always be preferable to back up one last time and then restore your replacement device from that backup.

This isn't always possible, but if the storage is undamaged, it would be ideal from a continuity perspective.

I rather the device is secure and you protect your device better, than to have a security hole so that your can backup your device after being careless.

Agree 100%. Reminds me of the adage: your lack of planning isn’t my emergency.

But it's certainly possible to do it securely if that eventuality was planned for.

No, more like: "How do I get my luggage out of the trunk after a brick goes through the windshield and smashes the trunk lever?"

Only if your luggage can be effortlessly duplicated and there’s a setting to automatically copy your trunk luggage to secure storage on a regular basis.

You pull down the back seat and get into the trunk from inside the car of course. Snark aside, if your phone is dead, the only way to get data out of it will be to get to the "disk" on the device, if that's even possible.

Is a confirmation required if the device has connected before?

Yes if it has been more than 1 hour

You replace the screen, enter passcode and do a backup, easy. Dont worry, Apple is hard at work implementing parts blacklists and soon wont allow 3rd party technicians screen replacements, because fraud or something. Oh, and Apple doesnt repair/recover broken devices, but they will gladly "upgrade" you to a new phone for only 599, or swap your broken one for a refurb.

> Dont worry, Apple is hard at work implementing parts blacklists

Source?

We get iPhone repairs out of Apple very often - If we mention it's urgent they'll swap it for a refurb, which is a good thing: It's allowed me to be in-and-out in 15 minutes versus dropping an iPhone off and picking it up the next day.

We have a business account - I've not broken my personal iPhone in years so I can't speak as a consumer. I did have a MacBook Pro 15" keyboard (pre-butterfly) fail WAY out of warranty and they replaced that for free too. Maybe I'm lucky, or maybe Apple aren't so bad to deal with after all?

> Apple doesnt repair/recover broken devices

Except for the fact they do ? https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service

USB keyboard: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HFD02LL/A/belkin-secure-w...

I keep an old iphone 5 with a busted screen for this reason - I would dispose of it but there’s no way to clean up the data. What’s that you say, it’s encrypted so the data looks like noise? Welp TFA says that’s not a problem since the screen broke a while ago, far prior to the latest ios release. Which prompts an interesting thought, how long will this current twilight last?

Widlarize[1] it. That tends to delete the data beyond any hope of recovery.

[1] http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-widlar-izer!/

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