Switching iPhones into a DFU (Device Firmware Update) mode is a hassle. Power off, press that and hold those that many seconds, release this but continue holding that until hopefully something happens on the phone. Many iPhone users have major troubles switching their iPhones into DFU mode. Luckily for them, they don’t have to do the Apple Dance too often.

Today, we released an updated version of iOS Forensic Toolkit. It’s not as much of an update to make big news shout, but the number of improvements here and there warrants a blog post, and is definitely worth upgrading to if you’re dealing with multiple iPhones on a daily basis.

Attacking Wi-Fi passwords is near hopeless if a wireless hotspot is properly secured. Today’s wireless security algorithms such as WPA are using cryptographically sound encryption with long passwords. The standard enforces the use of passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Encryption used to protect wireless communications is tough and very slow to break. Brute-forcing WPA/WPA2 PSK passwords remains a hopeless enterprise even if a horde of GPU’s is employed. Which is, in general, good for security – but may as well inspire a false sense of security if a weak, easy to guess password is selected.

We runned yet another Password Usage Bahaviour survey on our Web site and gthered statistically significant data, reflected in the following charts. And the main conclusion was that most people working with sensitive information want stricter security policies but rarely bother changing default passwords.

iOS 5 Support

Less than a month ago, we updated our Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker tool with the ability to recover master passwords for BlackBerry Password Keeper and BlackBerry Wallet. I have blogged about that and promised the “next big thing” for BlackBerry forensics to be coming soon. The day arrived.

Conferences are good. When attending Mobile Forensics Conference this year (and demoing our iOS Forensic Toolkit), we received a lot of requests for tools aimed at BlackBerry forensics. Sorry guys, we can’t offer the solution for physical acquisition of BlackBerries (yet), but there is something new we can offer right now.