Police said to avoid looking at locked iPhone screens with face identification

In the United States, police are asked not to look at the secure iPhone screens with Face ID, as this could disable face authentication and let investigators need potentially more code difficult to obtain in order to access it.

The face identity on iPhone X and iPhone XS tries to authenticate a face up to five times before the feature is turned off and the user authentication code is required to unlock the smartphone.

Elcomsoft presentation slide talking about Face ID (image via the motherboard)

Given the operation of the security system, Motherboard reports that the criminal society Elcomsoft advises law enforcement, "do not look at the screen, otherwise … the same thing will happen as in the past [at] The Apple event. "

The note appears on a slide belonging to an Elcomsoft presentation on iOS forensics and refers to the presentation of Apple's Face ID in 2017, in which Apple Vice President, Craig Federighi, had tried unsuccessfully to unlock an iPhone X with his own face. password instead.

Apple then explained that the iPhone was locked after the interaction of several people behind the scenes before Federighi, forcing him to enter an authentication code to unlock it.

This notice follows a recent report regarding the first known case of law enforcement that forced a suspect to unlock an iPhone using the Face ID feature. The action then helped the police uncover evidence that was later used to accuse the suspect of receiving and possessing child pornography.

In the United States, forcing someone to give up a password is interpreted as a self-incrimination, protected by the Fifth Amendment, but the courts have ruled that there is a difference between a system of recognition biometric such as Touch ID and a seized access code. your phone.

In some cases, the police had access to digital data by forcing people to unlock mobile devices with their fingers. Indeed, before using Face ID, law enforcement authorities had been informed of ways to avoid locking fingerprint authentication based Touch IDs on Apple iPhones.

"With Touch ID, you have to press the button (or at least touch it)," said Vladimir Katalov, CEO of Elcomsoft. Motherboard. "That's why we always recommend (during our trainings) to use the power button instead, for example to see if the phone is locked." But with Face ID, it's more easy to use "accidentally" by just looking at the phone. "