A company that makes the GrayKey phone-unlocking tool has developed GrayKey Preserve and an Evidence Preservation Mode that freeze seized iPhones in an After First Unlock (AFU) state, allowing investigators to access data that Apple’s November 2024 “inactivity reboot” - which automatically reboots phones after 72 hours of inactivity to impede forensic extraction - was designed to make harder to obtain. A leaked training video for law enforcement shows the system disabling Bluetooth, Wi‑Fi and cellular radios to isolate the device, preserving cached locations, recently deleted photos and messages “for an infinite amount of time,” and presenting only the phone’s model and software version to officers so data can be preserved without being viewed before authorization.
The video gives no low‑level technical details, but a security researcher who reviewed its transcript concluded GrayKey likely manipulates the iPhone clock or disables the background tasks that expire data, effectively keeping AFU state across reboots. That restores forensic capabilities lost to inactivity reboot and reopens the long-running contest between device makers and forensic vendors; it also raises privacy and policy concerns because such tools are marketed to law enforcement globally, including regimes with poor civil‑liberties records. Apple and the company did not comment.
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