The police in Detroit are currently complaining about a feature of iOS 18. They believe that it is causing numerous iPhones to restart continuously. The police suspect that it is related to the new update of iOS 18, but so far the situation is unclear. What is certain is that the work has become significantly more difficult as a result.
Around two months ago in September, Apple released its major update with iOS 18 for numerous iPhones. With iOS 18, there were many new features and improvements.
However, one feature is supposedly alarming the police in Detroit. This is reported by the English-language magazine Gizmodo.com. The confiscated iPhones are currently acting on their own.
iPhones restart spontaneously and complicate police work
What is the problem? According to 404.media.co, the police in the US city of Detroit report that confiscated iPhones are currently restarting suddenly and without warning. The problem is that this constant reboot makes police work and securing digital evidence much more difficult. Because this locks the officers out of the system. The police themselves state in a statement:
The purpose of this notice is to draw attention to a situation affecting iPhones that causes iPhone devices to restart within a short time (observations may be within 24 hours) when they are disconnected from a mobile network.
If the iPhone was in the After First Unlock (AFU) state, the device returns to a Before First Unlock (BFU) state after the restart. This can significantly hinder the acquisition of digital evidence from devices that are not supported in any state outside of AFU.
What is behind this? The lock state of an iPhone determines how easily it is for police officers to access the data using third-party tools. AFU and BFU stand for whether you have unlocked your device once after booting (AFU) or not yet done so (BFU).
The so-called BFU state is significantly harder to crack. The data that can easily be accessed here is generally not very helpful, as it mainly consists of system and application data. And this data is stored by the system so that you can start certain apps.
It is unknown why the devices restart, but it could be due to iOS 18
What could be the reason? At this point, no one really knows. In Detroit, the officers have no idea why the iPhones are restarting, but they suspect that it could be a security feature of iOS 18.
Even more bizarre is that the reboot occurred in models that were in airplane mode and in one that was in a Faraday box, which typically blocks signals from the outside. The officers suspect that the devices may have somehow communicated with each other.
In one case, the police even believe that one of their own iPhones may have prompted the seized devices to restart.
More about Apple: Another device from Apple that also communicates with other devices is the AirTag. Because AirTags communicate with other devices to be locatable. Elon Musk attempted to use this to protect his servers. But he overlooked an important detail: Elon Musk bought hundreds of AirTags from Apple to monitor his servers – But he overlooked an important detail
