Amaya Toman In the past, Apple successfully blocked access to passcode cracking tools such as GrayKey in one of its iOS updates. These tools are often used by police forces and government organizations. But the original software patch that was part of iOS 11.4.1 had its bugs and it wasn't difficult to get around it. But the situation seems to have changed last month when Apple released an iOS 12 update that completely blocks GrayKey.
The public heard about GrayKey for the first time this year. Specifically, it is a specific tool developed for the needs of police forces and used to make it easier to crack numerical codes on iPhones for the sake of investigations. But it now appears that GrayKey's effectiveness is limited to "partial extraction" and providing access to unencrypted metadata, such as file size data, rather than brute-force attacks on passwords. Forbes magazine, which reported on the matter, did not specify whether Apple released the patch recently or whether it had been in iOS 12 since its official release.
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Nor is it certain how Apple managed to block GrayKey. According to police officer Capt. John Sherwin of the Rochester Police Department, it's fairly safe to say that Apple has prevented GrayKey from unlocking updated devices. While GrayKey is almost 100% blocked in updated devices, it can be assumed that Grayshift, the company behind GrayKey, may already be working to overcome the newly created barrier.
Source: Forbes
