Journalists Learned What Grayshift Devices Look Like, with the Help of which the Police Hack the iPhone

Enthusiasts found on the network documents that Grayshift filed with the US Federal Communications Commission, from which it was possible to find out what devices for hacking criminals’ phones look like.

Back in 2014, Apple enabled encryption for almost all data stored inside the iPhone, which made it very difficult to access it without knowing the PIN or password used to unlock the device. Since then, cybercriminalists from companies such as Grayshift and Cellebrite have come into play, developing solutions that can help law enforcement unlock iPhones and gain access to data that could be useful in an investigation.

Thus, for many years, Grayshift, which sells devices for unlocking iPhones and Android devices to representatives of law enforcement agencies, has kept its technologies secret, aggressively protecting them, hiding from the public how its software and hardware works. Even what the Grayshift hardware looks like is a mystery.

In fact, a GrayKey device is known to burrow an iPhone or Android password and unlock the device, allowing its customers to access it and extract data. The first leaks of information about how GrayKey works and what it looks like occurred back in 2018 and 2020 (also due to papers filed with the US Federal Communications Commission), but exactly how Grayshift products work is still not completely known.

Now a new leak has been discovered by Logan Koepke, head of Upturn, a non-profit organization dedicated to research and advocacy at the intersection of civil rights and technology. Since Grayshift operates legally and is required to file documents with the US Federal Communications Commission, the Internet got the opportunity to see what the company’s new device looks like.

In particular, the documents discovered by Koepke show the appearance of the updated GrayKey 2.0.

The papers also include a description of the process the company undertakes before each sale.