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.
Cracking Wi-Fi Passwords with Sethioz
February 18th, 2015 by Olga Koksharova
If you care about password cracking, hardware acceleration or Wi-Fi protection this interview with our friend Sethioz is certainly for you. Being currently a freelance security tester Sethioz kindly shared his experience in cracking passwords using video cards, which in its turn derived from his gaming interest in cards. His personal experience may be very helpful to those whose concern about password cracking is not trivial.
How Secure Is Your Password? A Friendly Advice from a Company That Breaks Passwords
February 1st, 2015 by Vladimir Katalov
How many passwords does an average Joe or Jane has to remember? Obviously, it’s not just one or two. Security requirements vary among online services, accounts and applications, allowing (or disallowing) certain passwords. Seven years ago, Microsoft determined in a study that an average user had 6.5 Web passwords, each of which is shared across about four different websites. They’ve also determined that, back then, each user had about 25 accounts that required passwords, and typed an average of 8 passwords per day.
Breaking Into iCloud: No Password Required
June 17th, 2014 by Vladimir Katalov
With little news on physical acquisition of the newer iPhones, we made every effort to explore the alternatives. One of the alternatives to physical acquisition is over-the-air acquisition from Apple iCloud, allowing investigators accessing cloud backups stored in the cloud. While this is old news (we learned to download data from iCloud more than two years ago), this time we have something completely different: access to iCloud backups without a password! The latest release of Phone Password Breaker is all about password-free acquisition of iCloud backups.
Phone Password Breaker with all-new UI, BlackBerry 10 support, and downloading Windows Phone 8 data from the cloud
May 8th, 2014 by Vladimir Katalov
This time, we are updating our bread-and-butter mobile forensic tool, Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker, to version 3.0 (beta). This new version has many things that are new or have changed. Let’s see what’s new, and why.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About iTunes and iCloud Backups But Were Afraid to Ask
March 31st, 2014 by Vladimir Katalov
Do you think you know everything about creating and using backups of Apple iOS devices? Probably not. Our colleague and friend Vladimir Bezmaly (MVP Consumer security, Microsoft Security Trusted Advisor) shares some thoughts, tips and tricks on iTunes and iCloud backups.
