GrayKey maker claims fix for iPhone inactivity reboot
Original: Cops Can Bypass iPhone's Automatic Reboot to Get into Locked Phones
Why This Matters
The Apple-forensics firm arms race directly shapes privacy protections for millions of iPhone users globally.
Magnet Forensics, maker of the GrayKey phone-unlocking tool, says it has developed GrayKey Preserve and an Evidence Preservation Mode that freeze iPhones in an accessible state — bypassing Apple's 72-hour inactivity reboot feature introduced in iOS in November 2024.
Apple quietly rolled out an 'inactivity reboot' feature in late 2024, automatically restarting iPhones left unlocked for 72 hours, pushing them into a harder-to-crack state. Law enforcement pushed back immediately, citing court backlogs and authorization delays that prevent prompt device examination.
Now Magnet Forensics — the company behind GrayKey, widely used by police to extract data from iPhones and Android devices — says it has a countermeasure. A leaked internal video obtained by 404 Media shows a Magnet employee introducing two products: GrayKey Preserve, a new standalone device, and Evidence Preservation Mode for existing GrayKey hardware. 'This is an absolute game changer for iOS forensics,' the employee says in the video, which appears to date from early 2025 and was made exclusively for law enforcement.
The mechanism, while not fully disclosed, involves disabling radio transmissions — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular — essentially forcing Airplane Mode even if the phone's Control Center is restricted. This isolates the device from remote wipes and network-triggered changes. Magnet also claims the solution can preserve ephemeral data such as cached locations, recently deleted photos, and iMessages that iOS would otherwise purge after a set number of days. 'We're gonna be able to preserve that data for an infinite amount of time,' the employee states.
404 Media granted anonymity to the source, who was not authorized to share the video.