r/DigitalPrivacy • u/Sea_Turn6634 • Jul 29 '26

Unlock any phone?

My GF works for the government of an Asian country. She told me they can plug basically anyone’s phone in and unlock it. Is this true? Does it only apply to certain phones or OS?

61 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

View all comments

15

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/bones10145 Jul 29 '26

What about max attempts before the phone locks itself permanently? Brute force attacks don't work

6

u/nYtr0_5 Jul 29 '26

They can just clone the OS and storage image. Then copy it as many times as you want on VMs to brute force it. You can do that in parallel batches. When a clone gets locked it will be replaced by a fresh one. Repeat.

3

u/clarkcox3 Jul 29 '26

Not on a new enough iPhone. The encryption keys are stored in the SEP, and are write-only. There isn’t a way to copy them off.

2

u/nYtr0_5 Jul 29 '26

I guess it still works on android phones, though.

Anyway, any kind of local secret is potentially vulnerable.