There'd be no realistic concerns. Attack surface is miniscule, even in a hot state it needs a pretty thorough exploit chain and would need to be bespoke to a target. I don't recommend keeping a device seized and returned in the state it's returned in anyway. I'd disable any network access, take any important files out (you should have backups) and reset it. Some customers of forensic tools are known to implant spyware into seized devices when returning it. Serbian law enforcement did it, but those came with the prerequisite of having the device unlocked by their Cellebrite tool to install it. The spyware in question appeared to not be provided by Cellebrite either. No access = no install. Some forensiccompanies had tools that implanted spyware on AFU devices to keylog the PIN/Password when they could not access the device, such as GrayKey's Hide UI for iPhones. Hide UI alone was known to be buggy and problematic. It also didn't deliver the PIN remotely and required seizing it a second time when first revealed. Graykey moved away from being just for iOS devices a long time ago though. OS updates and device differences can intentionally (and more often unintentionally) break how exploits work. For example Pixel 9 was unsupported by Cellebrite despite no major security changes, and only just became supported this February. They'd likely put their focus on finding an exploit for the secure element to allow faster brute forcing.

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npub1x48p...za4r 11 months ago
Is the Hide UI installed even with the iPhone locked (AFU)? I heard about recent cases of modern iPhones being unlocked even when the user is using a complex password with special characters. Is there any other explanation besides the Hide UI?
Yes. If the device is unlocked successfully via brute force then it's considered an unlocked device extraction. Cellebrite call hot phones that are locked 'AFU' and hot phones that are unlocked / brute forced successfully as 'Unlocked'. Older Cellebrite docs we published used to call their AFU iOS capabilities Instant Password Retrieval (IPR) but they stopped doing that for some reason. AFU exploits are to access and extract data without unlocking the device or to bypass the unlock mechanism entirely. Since data isnt encrypted/at rest when AFU they can obtain almost all of the data (except conditional circumstances like data of other Android user profiles or the Mail inbox on iOS) if an exploit is available. "BFU Yes" in their docs means accessing data encrypted by the device rather than user credentials in a BFU state. For Android it's some OS configuration and APKs of installed apps. iOS provides far more information.