On Thursday 404 Media reported that police were freaking out about mysteriously rebooting iPhones. Now multiple experts have found that Apple introduced code that reboots locked phones after a period of time.

Apple quietly introduced code into iOS 18.1 which reboots the device if it has not been unlocked for a period of time, reverting it to a state which improves the security of iPhones overall and is making it harder for police to break into the devices, according to multiple iPhone security experts.

On Thursday, 404 Media reported that law enforcement officials were freaking out that iPhones which had been stored for examination were mysteriously rebooting themselves. At the time the cause was unclear, with the officials only able to speculate why they were being locked out of the devices. Now a day later, the potential reason why is coming into view.

“Apple indeed added a feature called ‘inactivity reboot’ in iOS 18.1.,” Dr.-Ing. Jiska Classen, a research group leader at the Hasso Plattner Institute, tweeted after 404 Media published on Thursday along with screenshots that they presented as the relevant pieces of code.

  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    58·
    12 days ago

    It does not. I don’t have it on my Pixel 6. From other people’s comments, it sounds like Samsung and other OEMs have added their version, though.

    • benEnglish
      22·
      12 days ago

      Yeah, can confirm Samsung has this. I have auto reboot configured.

    • viking@infosec.pubEnglish
      5·
      12 days ago

      I’ve added this function manually using Automate (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.llamalab.automate).

      You can trigger it to reboot on inactivity using some advanced parameters, but I’ve simply set it up to reboot at 3.30 AM every day, that way it’s also clearing the cache.

      This is how it looks like - the 5 min wait timer is to prevent a reboot loop if the phone is still booted up at 3.30 again.