We updated iOS Forensic Toolkit, adding low-level extraction support for iOS 26 and 26.0.1 via the extraction agent. This support is available for most iPhones and iPads compatible with the iOS 26 branch with a notable exception of the iPhone 17 range and M5-based iPads. Why exactly are these devices exempt, and what else did Apple do to make iOS 26 tougher and more resistant? Let’s find out.

We’ve just updated iOS Forensic Toolkit to version 10.0, significantly expanding its low-level extraction capabilities for both the extraction agent and bootloader-based methods. Previously, agent-based extraction was capped at iOS 16.6.1. This release finally covers the remainder of the iOS 16 branch, and adds support for the entire iOS 17  branch as well as iOS 18 through 18.7.1. We have also expanded checkm8 support to cover all the latest OS updates pushed by Apple on devices susceptible to the exploit. Finally, we improved extended logical acquisition support for iOS/iPadOS 26, now pulling significantly more shared data than before.

The release of the checkm8 exploit was a breakthrough for mobile forensics, finally granting investigators verifiable access to the file systems of various Apple devices. This accessibility established the current “gold standard” for extraction: using the bootloader exploit to access the file system and dump it into a simple tar archive. While convenient, a tar archive is merely a logical copy, not a physical one. It may fail to capture the device’s true state, missing certain low-level nuances. Truth be told, these nuances are rarely relevant to real investigations, but why settle for less when a better method is available? More importantly, this approach avoids the “teething problems” of traditional bootloader extraction – such as the mishandling of large sparse files – that continue to plague even the largest forensic vendors.

Big news is coming – and this time, it’s from the living room. Our team has successfully extracted a complete file system image from an Apple TV 4K running tvOS 26. This marks the first-ever low-level extraction of Apple’s 26th-generation operating systems, including iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and tvOS 26. No one – not even the major forensic players! – has been able to achieve this before.

Our customers often ask us which exact iOS versions are supported by iOS Forensic Toolkit. There’s always a temptation to answer “all of them,” and while that answer is technically correct, there are a lot of caveats. The devil is in the details, and the real answer depends on what you mean by “support”.

The latest update to iOS Forensic Toolkit brought bootloader-level extraction to a bunch of old iPads, Apple TVs, and even the first-gen HomePod running OS versions 17 and 18. This enabled full file system and keychain extraction on a those older Apple devices that can still run these versions of the OS.

In our previous post, Extracting and Analyzing Apple sysdiagnose Logs, we explained the difference between sysdiagnose logs and Apple Unified Logs. Today we’ll show how the latest build of iOS Forensic Toolkit can pull Unified Logs directly from an iPhone or iPad during advanced logical extraction.

Perfect Acquisition is the most sophisticated method for extracting data from compatible iOS devices. This method is completely forensically sound; it doesn’t modify a single bit of the filesystem. When supported, this method should always be used over alternatives. This guide outlines the entire process, from acquiring the data dump to decrypting and mounting it for analysis. Note: this guide applies to iOS Forensic Toolkit 8.80 and newer, in which the process has been made easier to use.

When an iPhone is seized and later re-examined, forensic teams sometimes find that data present in an earlier extraction are missing from a subsequent backup or filesystem image. Why exactly does that happen, what kinds of data are affected, how long do they usually live, and what can you do to preserve volatile and semi-volatile artifacts? Let’s try to find out.

Welcome to Part 5 of the Perfect Acquisition series! In case you missed the previous parts, please check them out for background information. This section provides a comprehensive guide to performing the Perfect APFS Acquisition procedure.