The cloud becomes an ever more important (sometimes exclusive) source of the evidence whether you perform desktop or cloud forensics. Even if you are not in forensics, cloud access may help you access deleted or otherwise inaccessible data.

Working in a mobile forensic company developing tools for iCloud forensics, logical and physical extraction of iPhone devices, we don’t live another day without being asked if (or “how”) we can help remove iCloud lock from a given iPhone. Without throwing a definite “yes” or “no” (or “just buy this tool”), we’ve decided to gather everything we know about bypassing, resetting and disabling iCloud activation lock on recent Apple devices.

In the US, Factory Reset Protection (FRP) is a mandatory part of each mobile ecosystem. The use of factory reset protection in mobile devices helped tame smartphone theft by discouraging criminals and dramatically reducing resale value of stolen devices. Compared to other mobile ecosystems, Apple’s implementation of factory reset protection has always been considered exemplary. A combination of a locked bootloader, secure boot chain and obligatory online activation of every iPhone makes iCloud lock one exemplary implementation of factory reset protection.