Bypassing Stolen Device Protection: Alternative Ways of Installing the Extraction Agent
June 24th, 2026 by Oleg Afonin
Stated plainly: iOS Forensic Toolkit can now get past Stolen Device Protection. There is a catch, and it belongs up front: this is not a magic unlock, and anyone selling it as one is selling something. What we have built is a way to install the extraction agent without ever pairing the iPhone to the workstation over a USB port. Because the most disruptive thing SDP does to a forensic workflow is place Face ID or Touch ID in front of that pairing step, bypassing the pairing step bypasses the gate. You still need the device passcode, a paid Apple Developer account, and a device you are authorized to examine. With those in hand, SDP is no longer the wall it was a month ago.
Forensic Implications of iOS Jailbreaking
June 12th, 2019 by Oleg Afonin
Jailbreaking is used by the forensic community to access the file system of iOS devices, perform physical extraction and decrypt device secrets. Jailbreaking the device is one of the most straightforward ways to gain low-level access to many types of evidence not available with any other extraction methods.
Step by Step Guide to iOS Jailbreaking and Physical Acquisition
May 30th, 2019 by Oleg Afonin
Unless you’re using GrayShift or Cellebrite services for iPhone extraction, jailbreaking is a required pre-requisite for physical acquisition. Physical access offers numerous benefits over other types of extraction; as a result, jailbreaking is in demand among experts and forensic specialists.
You Lost Your Second Authentication Factor. Now What?
April 26th, 2019 by Oleg Afonin
In Apple’s land, losing your Apple Account password is not a big deal. If you’d lost your password, there could be a number of options to reinstate access to your account. If your account is not using Two-Factor Authentication, you could answer security questions to quickly reset your password, or use iForgot to reinstate access to your account. If you switched on Two-Factor Authentication to protect your Apple Account, you (or anyone else who knows your device passcode and has physical access to one of your Apple devices) can easily change the password; literally in a matter of seconds.
A Bootable Flash Drive to Extract Encrypted Volume Keys, Break Full-Disk Encryption
April 25th, 2019 by Oleg Afonin
Full-disk encryption presents an immediate challenge to forensic experts. When acquiring computers with encrypted system volumes, the investigation cannot go forward without breaking the encryption first. Traditionally, experts would remove the hard drive(s), make disk images and work from there. We are offering a faster and easier way to access information required to break full-disk system encryption by booting from a flash drive and obtaining encryption metadata required to brute-force the original plain-text passwords to encrypted volumes. For non-system volumes, experts can quickly pull the system’s hibernation file to extract on-the-fly encryption keys later on with Elcomsoft Forensic Disk Decryptor.
iOS 12 Rootless Jailbreak
February 22nd, 2019 by Oleg Afonin
The new generation of jailbreaks has arrived. Available for iOS 11 and iOS 12 (up to and including iOS 12.1.2), rootless jailbreaks offer significantly more forensically sound extraction compared to traditional jailbreaks. Learn how rootless jailbreaks are different to classic jailbreaks, why they are better for forensic extractions and what traces they leave behind.
Technical and Legal Implications of iOS File System Acquisition
February 21st, 2019 by Vladimir Katalov
There has been a lot of noise regarding GrayKey news recently. GrayKey is an excellent appliance for iOS data extraction, and yes, it can help access more evidence. As always, the devil is in the detail.
Physical Extraction and File System Imaging of iOS 12 Devices
February 21st, 2019 by Oleg Afonin
The new generation of jailbreaks has arrived for iPhones and iPads running iOS 12. Rootless jailbreaks offer experts the same low-level access to the file system as classic jailbreaks – but without their drawbacks. We’ve been closely watching the development of rootless jailbreaks, and developed full physical acquisition support (including keychain decryption) for Apple devices running iOS 12.0 through 12.1.2. Learn how to install a rootless jailbreak and how to perform physical extraction with Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit.
iPhone Physical Acquisition: iOS 11.4 and 11.4.1
February 5th, 2019 by Vladimir Katalov
The two recent jailbreaks, unc0ver and Electra, have finally enabled file system extraction for Apple devices running iOS 11.4 and 11.4.1. At this time, all versions of iOS 11 can be jailbroken regardless of hardware. Let’s talk about forensic consequences of today’s release: keychain and file system extraction.
Identifying SSD Controller and NAND Configuration
January 31st, 2019 by Oleg Afonin
In our previous article Why SSDs Die a Sudden Death (and How to Deal with It) we talked about SSD endurance and how it’s not the only thing affecting real life reliability. In that article, we assumed that manufacturers’ specifications of certain SSD models remain similar for a given SSD model. In fact, this is not the case. Quite a few manufacturers play tricks with consumers, releasing a certain SSD model with top notch specifications only to downgrade them at some point during the production cycle (but certainly after receiving its share of glowing reviews). While some OEMs do note the change at least in the revision number, the rest will just quote the small print allowing them to “change specifications at any time without prior notice”. We’ve seen well known SSD manufacturers switching from reliable MLC NAND to planar TLC trash within the same model (and zero notice to potential buyers). How can you tell which NAND configuration your particular SSD drive employs and whether or not it lives up to your expectations? Read along to find out.
Securing and Extracting Health Data: Apple Health vs. Google Fit
January 30th, 2019 by Oleg Afonin
Today’s smartphones and wearable devices collect overwhelming amounts of data about the user’s health. Health information including the user’s daily activities, workouts, medical conditions, body measurements and many other types of information is undoubtedly one of the most sensitive types of data. Yet, smartphone users are lenient to trust this highly sensitive information to other parties. In this research, we’ll figure out how Apple and Google as two major mobile OS manufacturers collect, store, process and secure health data. We’ll analyze Apple Health and Google Fit, research what information they store in the cloud, learn how to extract the data. We’ll also analyze how both companies secure health information and how much of that data is available to third parties.
