PCMag editors select and review products independent. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support us testing.

Apple iPhones stored for forensic examination are restarting themselves, making it difficult for police to get the information they need.

The reports come from a document compiled by Detroit law enforcement and obtained

After mysterious reboots, devices are supposed to enter what is called the Before First Unlock (BFU) state. This makes it much more difficult to crack them to obtain data about criminal activities.

The document seen by 404 Average he theorized that iPhones restarted for a short period of time when taken off a cellular network, potentially around 24 hours. According to the document, one of the iPhones was even in Airplane mode and one was inside what is called a Faraday boxa type of container that blocks electronic signals from reaching the iPhone, preventing them from accessing telecom coverage as well as things like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Police speculate that the mysterious reboot may have been due to “the addition of an iOS 18.0 security feature.” The document also theorizes that iOS 18.0 iPhones brought into the lab communicated with the other iPhones, sending a signal to the phones to reboot.

Conformable 404this could apply to iOS 18.0 devices used by the forensics team for personal use. However, not all experts agreed with the paper’s conclusion. Matthew Green, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, said the theories were “deeply suspect”.

he said 404: “The idea that phones should reboot periodically after an extended period without a network is brilliant, and I’m amazed if Apple actually did it on purpose.”

Apple itself has yet to comment on the news.

However, Jiska Naehrdine, an independent cybersecurity researcherclaimed that Apple introduced an “idle restart” in iOS 18.1, citing code hosted on GitHub.

She commented on the design choice: “This is a cheap and great mitigation!”

“While most people won’t have their phone forensically analyzed, many will have their devices stolen,” she added. “It protects user data in both cases.”

The police document urged forensics specialists to isolate recently unlocked smartphones—After First Unlock (AFU)—from iOS devices and identify which ones have rebooted and may have lost their states AFU. “The issue needs to be fully communicated in forensics and investigations to raise awareness, spread the word,” it said.