Elcomsoft Phone Breaker and Phone Viewer Updated With iOS 10 Support

MOSCOW, September 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. updates Elcomsoft Phone Breaker, the company's mobile acquisition tool, adding full support for Apple's latest version of iOS, the iOS 10. Elcomsoft Phone Breaker 6.10 can decrypt password-protected local backups by attacking the original plain-text password, and perform remote acquisition by downloading iOS 10 backups from iCloud. When analyzing password-protected backups, examiners can decrypt and explore the keychain.

A Mac OS X version of Elcomsoft Phone Viewer is soon to join the company's mobile forensic range. When released for both OS X and Windows platforms, Elcomsoft Phone Viewer 3.0 will receive full support for local and cloud iOS 10 backups out of the box. The new tool is scheduled to release in a week.

"iOS 10 is a major milestone", says Vladimir Katalov, ElcomSoft CEO. "Among many things, the new OS introduces major tweaks in security settings and changes many things about local and cloud backups. Our mobile forensic tools are updated to support acquisition and analysis of Apple backups in the new format." 

Backup passwords protect local iOS backups produced via Apple iTunes. By decrypting password-protected Apple backups, investigators can gain access to application data and keychain items such as passwords to Web sites and social networks, payment information and, in many cases, a password to the user's Apple ID account.

What Else Is New 

Below is the full list of changes in Elcomsoft Phone Breaker 6.10:

- Recovers original passwords to iOS 10 offline backups

- Decrypts iOS 10 backups with a known password

- Explores iOS 10 keychain

- Downloads iOS 10 backups from Apple iCloud

- Supports NVIDIA Pascal architecture (GTX 1080 and other 1000-series boards)

Elcomsoft Phone Viewer 3.0: Now for Windows and Mac OS X, iOS 10 Support 

Elcomsoft Phone Viewer for Mac is a welcome addition to ElcomSoft's range of mobile forensic tools. Now available on Mac and Windows, Elcomsoft Phone Viewer is finally ready to become a fully-featured companion to Elcomsoft Phone Breaker on both platforms.

Elcomsoft Phone Viewer 3.0 receives iOS 10 support out of the box in both Windows and Mac OS editions. Elcomsoft Phone Viewer 3.0 will be released before the end of September.

About iOS Backups 

Unlike competing platforms, Apple mobile devices come with extensive support for both offline and online backups. While today's users are much more likely to use iCloud for backing up their data, offline backups are commonly used by forensic examiners during the acquisition of iOS devices.

Offline backups can be produced by Apple iTunes and third-party forensic tools. Users can protect offline backups with a password. Once a backup password is set, no data leaves the device unencrypted. If a backup password is not known, removing or resetting that password is absolutely impossible without performing a full factory reset that permanently destroys data.

Forcing an iPhone or iPad to produce an offline backup and analyzing resulting data is one of the very few acquisition options available for devices running iOS 10. At this time, it remains the only acquisition option available for iPhone 5s, 6/6Plus, 6s/6sPlus and 7/7Plus running iOS 10 that offers access to device keychain.

Keychain Decryption 

Somewhat counter-intuitively, password-protected iOS backups enable forensic access to more information compared to backups without a password. Password-protected backups expose access to iOS most secure storage, the keychain. Keychain items include highly sensitive information such as logins and passwords to Web sites, passwords and/or authentication tokens to various social networks and instant messengers. In many cases, password-protected backups are found to contain passwords or authentication tokens to the user's Apple ID account, which may open access to files synced with the user's iCloud.

Elcomsoft Phone Breaker 6.10 allows investigators decrypting iOS 10 keychain in password-protected backups. The new Keychain Explorer allows browsing and searching keychain items, and includes a one-click tool to locate and extract password and/or authentication token to the user's Apple ID account.

About Elcomsoft Phone Breaker 

Elcomsoft Phone Breaker is an all-in-one mobile acquisition tool to extract information from a wide range of sources. Supporting offline and cloud backups created by Apple, BlackBerry and Windows mobile devices, the tool can extract and decrypt user data including cached passwords and synced authentication credentials to a wide range of resources from local backups. Cloud extraction with or without a password makes it possible to decrypt FileVault 2 containers without lengthy attacks and pull communication histories and retrieve photos that've been deleted by the user a long time ago.

About Elcomsoft Phone Viewer 

Elcomsoft Phone Viewer is a compact, fast and easy to use mobile forensic tool to enable experts viewing information stored in unprotected local and cloud backups. Supporting backups produced by popular Apple, BlackBerry and Windows Phone devices, the tool offers access to contacts, messages, call logs, notes and calendar, media files and Web activities, and allows viewing information about the device. The small, affordable tool offers a simple and convenient user interface that matches the usage experience of Elcomsoft Phone Breaker, thus requiring no additional learning curve.

Pricing and Availability 

Elcomsoft Phone Breaker 6.10 is available immediately for both Windows and Mac OS X. Home, Professional and Forensic editions are available. iCloud recovery is only available in Professional and Forensic editions, while password-free iCloud access as well as the ability to download arbitrary information from iCloud and iCloud Drive are only available in the Forensic edition. Elcomsoft Phone Breaker Pro is available to North American customers for $199. The Forensic edition enabling over-the-air acquisition of iCloud data and support for binary authentication tokens is available for $799. The Home edition is available for $79. Local pricing may vary.

Elcomsoft Phone Viewer 3.0 will be available before the end of September 2016.

System Requirements 

Elcomsoft Phone Breaker 6.10 supports Windows Vista, Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and Windows 10 as well as Windows 2003, 2008 and 2012 Server. The Mac version supports Mac OS X 10.7.x and newer. Elcomsoft Phone Breaker operates without Apple iTunes or BlackBerry Link being installed.

About ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. 

Founded in 1990, ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. develops state-of-the-art computer forensics tools, provides computer forensics training and computer evidence consulting services. Since 1997, ElcomSoft has been providing support to businesses, law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies. ElcomSoft tools are used by most of the Fortune 500 corporations, multiple branches of the military all over the world, foreign governments, and all major accounting firms. ElcomSoft is a Microsoft Partner (Gold Application Development and Gold Intelligent Systems), Intel Premier Elite Partner and member of NVIDIA's CUDA/GPU Computing Registered Developer Program.