The iOS 27 Recovery Menu: What It Means for Forensics
August 5th, 2026 by Oleg Afonin
iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, currently in beta, add a bootable recovery menu to the iPhone and iPad. Hold the power button while the device starts up and you land in a small pre-boot environment with six options, one of which is the old “connect to computer” recovery mode. This is the same idea Apple silicon Macs have had for years, and it is overdue on the phone.
checkra1n, USB Restrictions and Breaking Into Locked iPhones
July 17th, 2020 by Vladimir Katalov
The checkra1n jailbreak is fantastic. Not only does it work with the latest versions of iOS the other jailbreaks aren’t even available for, but it also allows performing partial data extraction from disabled and locked iPhones even if the passcode is not known. Still, you can encounter some problems if the USB restricted mode has been activated on the device. The latest build of chechra1n is to the rescue.
Defending Americans’ Right to Decrypt
July 16th, 2020 by Olga Koksharova
19 years ago, on July 16, 2001, the FBI arrested Dmitry Sklyarov, almost immediately after his speech at the DEF CON hacker conference, on a number of charges by Adobe. Dmitry was accused of many things, from software trafficking to conspiring with Elcomsoft and “third parties”, who put up the software for sale that could bypass technological protection on copyrighted material. Dmitry’s career at Elcomsoft began with a project on gaining access to protected Access databases. Soon, Dmitry got an idea about the security of PDF documents, and so he started working on it. From this idea the never-to-be-forgotten Advanced eBook Processor was born, because of which Dmitry was arrested in 2001 at DEF CON in Las Vegas, NV.
checkra1n Installation Tips & Tricks
July 14th, 2020 by Vladimir Katalov
Having trouble installing the checkra1n jailbreak? If you do it right, you achieve a nearly 100% success rate. We have collected the most important information on how to install and troubleshoot the checkra1n jailbreak. By following these advises, you will be able to jailbreak like a pro, whether you just want to research your own device or perform the file system and keychain acquisition.
The iPhone Data Recovery Myth: What You Can and Cannot Recover
July 10th, 2020 by Oleg Afonin
There is no lack of tools claiming the ability to recover lost or deleted information from the iPhone. These tools’ claims range from “Recover data lost due to water damaged, broken, deletion, device loss, etc.” to the much more reserved “Selectively recovers iPhone data from internal memory, iCloud, and iTunes”. Do any of those tools actually work, and do they live up to the user’s expectations? The answer is complex, hence this article. Let us place the claims through our usual scrutiny.
Significant Locations, iOS 14 and iCloud
July 9th, 2020 by Vladimir Katalov
Location data is one of the most sensitive pieces of personal information. In today’s world, aggregated location data is as sensitive and as valuable as the user’s passwords. Once this data is transmitted to the OS manufacturer’s cloud service or any of the third-party vendors, the user has the right to know exactly what information is collected; who, when, and how has access to it. In today’s article, we will talk about one of the iOS lesser known features called “Significant locations”.
Extracting and Using Stored Passwords from Web Browsers
July 7th, 2020 by Oleg Afonin
Breaking passwords becomes more difficult with every other update of popular software. Microsoft routinely bumps the number of hash iterations to make Office document protection coherent with current hardware. Apple uses excessive protection of iTunes backups since iOS 10.1, making brute force attacks a thing of the past. VeraCrypt and BitLocker were secure from the get go. However, everything is not lost if you consider human nature.
Extracting Passwords from Tencent QQ Browser
July 7th, 2020 by Oleg Afonin
QQ Browser is one of China’s most popular Web browsers. With some 10% of the Chinese market and the numerous Chinese users abroad, QQ Browser is used by the millions. Like many of its competitors, QQ Browser offers the ability to store website passwords. The passwords are securely encrypted, and can be only accessed once the user signs into their Windows account. Learn what you need to do to extract passwords from Tencent QQ Browser.
Unlocking BitLocker Volumes by Booting from a USB Drive
June 30th, 2020 by Oleg Afonin
BitLocker is Windows default solution for encrypting disk volumes. A large number of organizations protect startup disks with BitLocker encryption. While adding the necessary layer of security, BitLocker also has the potential of locking administrative access to the encrypted volumes if the original Windows logon password is lost. We are offering a straightforward solution for reinstating access to BitLocker-protected Windows systems with the help of a bootable USB drive.
iOS, watchOS and tvOS Acquisition Methods Compared: Compatibility Notes
June 18th, 2020 by Vladimir Katalov
How can you obtain the highest amount of data from an iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Apple Watch? This is not as simple as it may seem. Multiple overlapping extraction methods exist, and some of them are limited to specific versions of the OS. Let’s go through them and summarize their availability and benefits.
iOS Extraction Without a Jailbreak: Full iOS 10 Support
June 16th, 2020 by Oleg Afonin
Originally released in September 2016, iOS 10 was regularly updated for most devices until July 2017. The 64-bit iPhones capable of running iOS 10 range from the iPhone 5s to iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. While one is hardly likely to encounter an iOS 10 in the wild, forensic labs still process devices running the older version of the OS. In this update, we’ve brought support for jailbreak-free extraction back to the roots, adding support for the oldest version of iOS capable of running on the iPhone 7 generation of devices. Let’s see what it takes to extract an older iPhone without a jailbreak. In addition, we have expanded support for the Apple TV devices, now offering keychain decryption in addition to file system extraction for both Apple TV 4 (Apple TV HD) and Apple TV 4K running tvOS 13.4 through 13.4.5.
