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Comment by throwaway27448 | Hacker News Reader

Why bother stealing iPhones? Is it just for the scrap/recycle->repair value?

There's also a scam where they contact the owner from abroad, offering to return it, claiming they're an innocent trying to activate a used phone they spent their last dollar on, or threatening the original user into unlocking it. They will say that they're hackers, connected to criminals in your home city, using your name and recent photos to say that they're going to expose your text messages. Anything to get an unlock.

They send them to countries where they aren't locked or break it down for parts.

> They send them to countries where they aren't locked

iphones will remain locked regardless of what country they're in. I presume you're talking about states who are seemingly unwilling to pursue/prosecute claims of theft?

there's still a fairly lucrative parts stripping market and there are extreme efforts that are used to "unlock" locked devices - it has been known in the Chinese marketplace that you could get paired chips to do SMD rework with a "clean" set of identifiers. they'll swap the SOC, the flash, and the wireless all for a few bucks.

older iOS devices as well are also vulnerable to having their syscfg rewritten via exploits, so you can "clean" a locked device that way as well with a good set of serials. Apple Watches are a hot one for this.

On top of that a sizable percentage of theft victims don't even bother to report it stolen.

You can't activate the hardware with a different ID regardless. It requires the owner to relinquish ownership.

I'm sure this is different with different components of course depending on how granularly apple tracks their hardware—but the whole package certainly can't be activated.

My high level understanding is there are countries where things like IMEI barring aren't enforced and the actual unlocking of the phone is possible. Via jailbreaking or flashing I presume

Not possible on modern iPhones.

Pegasus installed via zero click 0 day exploit.

Completely owned.

Nobody is wasting nation-state exploits to launder stolen phones.

You can send them to Chinese chop-shops and still turn a decent buck.

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