iPhone: A document made by the San Diego Police Department shows how agents manage to break into iPhones with a tool called GrayKey. With the feature, it is possible to access even devices turned off and with low battery.
The information is contained in material acquired by Motherboard, Vice’s technology website, which released excerpts of the information this Tuesday (22). A cell phone accessed by the method can have its data extracted and even passwords leaked.
The instruction manual is called “How to unlock and extract data from Apple mobile devices with GrayKey”. GrayKey, which was created by the North American company Grayshift, can “bypass” the iOS system encryption and perform a kind of brute force attack on some models.
According to Motherboard, police across the United States purchased the device. The document, however, emphasizes that smartphones can only be hacked if there is a legal authorization, such as in cases where there are search and seizure warrants for the investigated.
How is access done?
The record points out that GrayKey can access devices without battery (it has an agent that provides between 2% and 3%), turned on and even with damaged displays.
In the case of devices with passwords containing real words, for example, the tool uses brute force using a long list of word combinations that can be read by human beings. Cell phones with passwords that combine random letters and numbers are already harder to get around.
