How to Unlock and Extract Data From iPhones Using GrayKey

Instructions for iPhone cracking tool GrayKey have surfaced online and it appears they were written by the San Diego Police Department (via Vice).

GrayKey Unlock Directions

For this recipe you’ll need:

• 1 iPhone
• 1 GrayKey
• 1 search warrant
• 2 glasses of wine

A GrayKey is a device used by law enforcement to unlock a smartphone and extract its contents for an investigation. According to the document, it installs a “brute force agent” to unlock the device. iOS can protect against brute force attacks to some capacity, but apparently it can be bypassed in some circumstances.

The document says an analyst must use a TXT file that contains over 63 million passwords, and GrayKey has a default list called “crackstation-human-only.txt.” If the brute force agent is successfully installed, Airplane mode will be activated. This is presumably to prevent someone from remotely wiping the device using Find My.