The American company DriveSavers first in the world launched the service of hacking iPhone for individuals

Hacking the iPhone and other devices under the latest versions of iOS is a rare service. Not so long ago, law enforcement agencies in the United States even sued Apple for help to get the San Bernardino shooter’s phone hacked because they could not do it on their own. As a result, the third-party company had to pay about $ 1 million for hacking the phone.

Now iPhone unlocking is available for everyone. The American company DriveSavers launched the iPhone hacking service for individuals for $ 3,900 . “As far as we know, this is the first service of this kind in the world for individuals ,” commented Vladimir Katalov, CEO of Elcomsoft for Habrahabra. -A similar service has long been provided by the Israeli company Cellebrite (by the way, for about the same money), but only for law enforcement agencies. We have not heard about other services . ”

We are talking about the service Passcode Lockout Data Recovery : unlock password on iOS devices. The offer goes against Apple’s many promises about data security. Apple claims that no one and even she herself can access the device after it is locked, if you don’t know the code. There are ways to remotely erase data, but to retrieve information, such as messages, photos and other data on a device that is not stored in the cloud, is technically impossible, at least without exploiting a high level vulnerability.

DriveSavers claims that it uses “patented technology” for data recovery, which is applicable for “any length of password”. The first of its kind service is offered exclusively for consumers who have forgotten device passwords or if a smartphone / tablet is blocked after several unsuccessful attempts, as well as for those who need access to data stored on the device of a deceased relative.

Other companies offer a similar service only to law enforcement. DriveSavers first offers this service to consumers. DriveSavers service is not available to law enforcement and requires confirmation of ownership before unlocking the device.

“Smartphones store irreplaceable data, such as family photos and videos, contacts, notes, text messages, and voice recordings. Loss of access to this type of data can be catastrophic, says DriveSavers President Scott Moyer. “We are pleased to offer this service to people who have lost access to their phones or want to gain access to records stored on a smart device of a loved one who has gone to another world.”

In general, the Passcode Lockout Data Recovery service works for devices of any type under any operating system: iOS, Android and Windows. These are smartphones iPhone, LG, Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, BlackBerry and others. But devices of any type could have been hacked earlier, this service was also provided to individuals, but iOS devices were previously considered impregnable.

By the way, DriveSavers specializes in recovering data from absolutely any type of storage, including SSD, HDD, smart phones, camera cards, RAID, and NAS devices. The company handles a variety of situations, including mechanical, physical, water and fire damage, data corruption, file deletion, password blocking, and more. Her clients include Google, Lucasfilm, NASA, Harvard University and the US Army.

Journalists of The Verge edition contacted the company representatives and learned the details about the work of this service. They were the ones who received information that the data recovery service from the iPhone costs $ 3,900. How justified is this price? "Naturally, it depends on the value of the information in the smartphone. For some, the data is much more valuable, for others, almost nothing is worth anything (or you can easily restore from a cloud or backup) , ”says Vladimir Katalov, whose company just helps to recover data from backup storage or from the cloud, including for iPhone ( Elcomsoft Phone Breaker program ).

Returning to DriveSavers, their service works simply: you send by mail a blocked smartphone or tablet - and the company returns it already unlocked. “Depending on the situation, we can request death certificates, testamentary documents, court documents or other legal documents. In the case of death, we check who is the executor of the state through an interview and documents. ”

Drivesavers does not say how their code traversal works. Of course, these statements caused serious skepticism. After all, even the FBI could not crack the Apple phone, as we mentioned, and paid $ 1 million to third-party hackers.

By the way, the shooter from San Bernardino had an iPhone 5C model, but since the release of this model, the security of Apple phones has increased. Among the experts there was an opinion that hackers used a certain exploit, which is relevant only for older versions of iOS. But it turns out that this is not the case, and even the latest iOS models can be cracked. So Vladimir Katalov says that the Israeli company Cellebrite provides such a service for law enforcement.

By the way, we asked the CEO of Elcomsoft what hardware and software are used to hack the iPhone inRussian law enforcement agencies . This is also interesting information. At least, it has never been announced before:

“There is only one tool for hacking iOS devices on the market - GrayKey from GrayShift. But it is supplied only to the States, Canada, the UK and several other countries, the expert explained. - In Russia, the same tools are used to extract and analyze data from iOS devices:

• Mobile Forensic Specialist (Russia)
• Elcomsoft Mobile Forensic Bundle (Russia)
• Cellebrite UFED (Israel)
• XRY (Sweden)

By the way, Vladimir Katalov sent this answer from his iPhone, so it makes sense to think about which phones are used by the best security specialists in Russia. Probably, there is nothing more reliable than the iPhone.

By the words of Vladimir Katalov, one has only to add that in iOS 12 the GrayKey tool seems to be completely blocked , like other programs for brute force passwords.

The company DriveSavers, apparently, uses some new unknown exploit, which no one yet knows. If you have an extra $ 3,900 and a locked phone, you can check the veracity of its statements yourself. First of all, it is worth making the leadership of Apple.