The iPhone is one of the most popular smartphone devices. Thanks to its huge popularity, the iPhone gets a lot of attention from the forensic community. Multiple acquisition methods exist, allowing forensic users to obtain more or less information with more or less efforts. Some of these acquisition methods are based on undocumented exploits and public jailbreaks, while some other methods utilize published APIs to access information. In this article, we’ll compare the types and amounts of data one can extract from the same 256-GB iPhone 11 Pro Max using three different acquisition methods: advanced logical, full file system and iCloud extraction.

We recently introduced a new acquisition method for iPhone and iPad devices. The fast, simple and safe extraction agent requires no jailbreak, and delivers the full file system image and the keychain. The latest release of Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit expanded this method to iOS 13 and filled the gaps in some versions of iOS 12 that were missing support (such as iOS 12.3 and 12.4.1). Finally, we now officially support the latest generation of iPhone devices including the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro. The new compatibility matrix becomes significantly more diverse with this release, so bear with us to learn which iOS devices can be extracted without a jailbreak.

In our recent article iPhone Acquisition Without a Jailbreak I mentioned that agent-based extraction requires the use of an Apple ID that has been registered in Apple’s Developer Program. Participation is not free and comes with a number of limitations. Why do you need to become a “developer”, what are the limitations, and is there a workaround? Read along to find out.

The popular unc0ver jailbreak has been updated to v4, and this is quite a big deal. The newest update advertises support for the latest A12 and A13 devices running iOS 13 through 13.3. The current version of iOS is 13.3.1. None of the older versions (including iOS 13.3) are signed, but still there are a lot of A12/A12X/A13 devices floating around. Until now, file system and keychain extraction was a big problem. The newest unc0ver jailbreak makes it possible.

What is DFU, and how is it different from the recovery mode? How do you switch the device to recovery, DFU or SOS mode, what can you do while in these modes and what do they mean in the context of digital forensics? Can you use DFU to jailbreak the device and perform the extraction if you don’t know the passcode? Read along to find out.

We have recently updated Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit, adding the ability to acquire the file system from a wide range of iOS devices. The supported devices include models ranging from the iPhone 5s through the iPhone X regardless of the iOS version; more on that in iOS Device Acquisition with checkra1n Jailbreak. In today’s update (for both Windows and macOS platforms as usual), we’ve added the ability to extract select keychain records in the BFU (Before First Unlock) mode. We have a few other changes and some tips on extracting locked and disabled devices.

We’ve just announced a major update to iOS Forensic Toolkit, now supporting the full range of devices that can be exploited with the unpatchable checkra1n jailbreak.  Why is the checkra1n jailbreak so important for the forensic community, and what new opportunities in acquiring Apple devices does it present to forensic experts? We’ll find out what types of data are available on both AFU (after first unlock) and BFU (before first unlock) devices, discuss the possibilities of acquiring locked iPhones, and provide instructions on installing the checkra1n jailbreak. (more…)

Are you excited about the new checkm8 exploit? If you haven’t heard of this major development in the world of iOS jailbreaks, I would recommend to read the Technical analysis of the checkm8 exploit aricle, as well as Developer of Checkm8 explains why iDevice jailbreak exploit is a game changer. The good news is that a jailbreak based on this exploit is already available, look at the checkra1n web site.

The release of macOS Catalina brought the usual bunch of security updates. One of those new security features directly affects how you install Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit on Macs running the new OS. In this guide we’ll provide step by step instructions on installing and running iOS Forensic Toolkit on computers running macOS 10.15 Catalina. Note: on macOS Catalina, you must use iOS Forensic Toolkit 5.11 or newer (older versions may also work but not recommended).

When you perform Apple iCloud acquisition, it almost does not matter what platform to use, Windows or macOS (I say almost, because some differences still apply, as macOS has better/native iCloud support). Logical acquisition can be done on any platform as well. But when doing full file system acquisition of jailbroken devices using Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit, we strongly recommend using macOS. If you are strongly tied to Windows, however, there are some things you should know.