this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
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The way this article is framed sounds like bullshit to me. 18.1 was released less than 2 weeks ago. Any phone running this version of iOS would have had to already been in custody and somehow upgraded to this version, or otherwise brought into custody very recently—too recently for this to have already posed such a problem that law enforcement is “freaking out” and reporting it to the media.
Don't they auto update the OS when connected to a charger? But even then, that would have triggered a reboot already.
This is the easiest thing for people with money, and motivation to avoid happening.
Remove the sim card if it's an older device, use a Faraday cage (your microwave is one) or a jammer. If you are the government you can also tell the telecom to block the phone from connecting
Police may be leaving phones online in case it continues receiving relevant evidence (texts, emails, etc).
I think you're seriously overestimating the technical prowess of the average law enforcement officer...
The ars article mentioned 18.0 had a bug that caused random reboots so it might've been mostly that
iOS has auto update for a while and iOS users update their devices more often than Android. 2 weeks is not a long time for adoption of new version for iOS.
A non-insignificant amount of people have been running the public betas because of Apple intelligence, RCS / iMessage toys, UI customization, etc. For example, MixPanel reported about 2% of the iOS install base running 18.0 before 18.0's launch. IMHO, that's pretty crazy for a beta OS.
https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_18