While iPhones are generally regarded as the safest options among celebrities and people alike, they mightn’t be purely immune to unlocking your data. Law enforcement agencies are often in the news for relying on dedicated software, like Cellebrite for example, to unlock the phones of persecuted or to keep an eye on someone they believe could be a threat.
However, a recent report from 404 Media notes that Cellebrite software cannot unlock any more recent models such as 2018’s iPhone XR—as long as they are running iOS 17.4 or later.
While the software known to unlock iPhones in question has always kept it under the wraps regarding how it can (or in fact, does) unlock iPhones, the report seems to mention which iPhones it can unlock. Meanwhile, how it unlocks these iPhones remains a top secret.
Per report, two documents were recently leaked. One of them focuses on iPhones, while the other deals with Android devices. In the iOS matrix provided, the documents say newer iPhones such as iPhone 12, iPhone 13, and iPhone 14 can soon be unlocked for iOS 17.1 to 17.3.1. Right now, they can only unlock up to iOS 17.0.3. But for iOS 17.4 and later, they’re still figuring out how to unlock them.
The bottom line is that Cellebrite can only unlock older iPhones that are five years old or more unless they’ve updated to iOS 17.4 or higher. Which brings a bit of free advice that to keep your data safer, you must always update to the latest iOS versions. Because Apple has quite a history of not budging against and respecting user privacy, forcing authorities to approach software agencies.