Apple creates lockdown mode for high-risk people
CART could not find anything from the iPhone. “Because the iPhone was in lockdown mode, CART could not remove that device,” the government filing said.
The government also presented an announcement by FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky stating that the agency “has halted any further efforts to extract this device due to the Court’s standstill order.” The FBI extracted information from the SIM card “with an auto-generated HTML report created by the tool used by Cartwright,” but “the data contained in the HTML was limited to telephone numbers.”
Apple says Lockdown Mode “helps protect devices against extremely rare and highly sophisticated cyberattacks,” and is “designed for the very small number of individuals who, because of who they are or what they do, may be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats.”
Introduced in 2022, Lockdown Mode is available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. This must be enabled separately for each device. To enable it on an iPhone or iPad, users will open the Settings app, tap Privacy & Security, scroll down and tap Lockdown Mode, and then tap Turn on Lockdown Mode.
The process is similar on Mac. In the System Settings app that can be accessed through the Apple menu, the user will click on Privacy & Security, scroll down and click on Lockdown Mode, and then click on.
“When Lockdown Mode is enabled, your device will not operate as it normally does,” Apple says. “To reduce the attack surface that could potentially be exploited by highly targeted mercenary spyware, certain apps, websites and features are strictly limited for security and some experiences may not be available at all.”
Lockdown mode blocks most types of message attachments, blocks FaceTime calls from people you haven’t contacted in the last 30 days, restricts the types of browser technologies that websites can use, limits photo sharing, and imposes other restrictions. However, users can exclude specific apps and websites that they trust from these restrictions.
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