iPhones Running iOS 18.1 Were Mysteriously Rebooting, But It Was Later Found That Apple Intentionally Added This Precaution To Prevent Cops From Unlocking Them

Apple is constantly striving to improve the security of its iPhones, with one of the more robust features being that a stolen device becomes equivalent to a paperweight if the passcode or password cannot be remembered. As for the latest one that is baked into iOS 18.1, law enforcement personnel were probably scratching their heads when they witnessed various iPhone models mysteriously rebooting, but that is just another clever approach the Cupertino giant employed to prevent the police from breaking into these handsets.

A new report says that the latest iOS 18.1 feature is called ‘inactivity reboot,’ which restarts the iPhone if it has not been unlocked for a certain period

This peculiar behavior does not mean that a bug is affecting an iPhone, but a safety feature that Apple implemented in iOS 18.1 called ‘inactivity reboot,’ at least that is what Jiska Classen, a research group leader at the Hasso Plattner Institute, is calling it. As reported by 404 Media, Christopher Vance, a forensic specialist at Magnet Forensics, who is part of a group chat, mentions below that some code that has been identified in iOS 18 and higher that is an activity time that will force iPhones in an AFU state to reboot into a BFU state.

Apple indeed added a feature called “inactivity reboot” in iOS 18.1. This is implemented in keybagd and the AppleSEPKeyStore kernel extension. It seems to have nothing to do with phone/wireless network state. Keystore is used when unlocking the device.https://t.co/ONZuU9zVt2 https://t.co/4ORUqR6P6N pic.twitter.com/O3jijuqpN0

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