Changing Eric Adams’ Phone Password Could Prevent Unlocking (For Now)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – NOVEMBER 11: New York City Mayor Eric Adams attends annual Veterans Day … (+) Parade in New York on November 11, 2023. Adams recently had his phone and iPad seized by the FBI while investigating campaign finances in his administration. Hundreds of people lined up on 5th Avenue to watch the largest Veterans Day parade in the United States. This year’s event included veterans, active military, police officers, firefighters and dozens of school groups participating in the parade honoring the men and women who served and sacrificed for the country (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

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The indictment against Eric Adams was unsealed on September 26, 2024, and laid out charges of bribery and campaign finance violations. This unsealing made public details about Adams’ actions, including his decision to change his phone passcode from 4 digits to 6 digits on November 5, 2024, one day before the FBI executed a search warrant on his devices.

Why is a Change from Four to Six Digits Important?

This seemingly minor change significantly increased the complexity of unlocking your device, adding significant challenges for forensic tools like Cellebrite and Graykey that rely on brute force attacks to crack passwords.

Going from ten thousand possible combinations (with a 4-digit passcode) to a million combinations (with a 6-digit passcode) significantly lengthens the time it takes for forensic investigators to break into a phone.

This challenge is compounded by modern smartphone security features such as delays between password attempts and Apple’s Secure Enclave, which isolates encryption keys.

Apple’s Secure Enclave is a special chip found in devices like the iPhone that protects sensitive information like your passcode or Face ID data. It works by storing encryption keys securely, making it harder for anyone to hack into your phone. If someone tries to guess your password too many times, Secure Enclave slows down those attempts and can even wipe data on the phone after too many wrong guesses.

It’s Just a Matter of Time and Technology

While it is unclear as of this writing whether investigators were able to unlock Adams’ phone without a passcode, it is likely his actions are merely delaying the inevitable, the indictment states.

Advances in mobile phone forensic technology mean that nowadays, even if a phone is locked and inaccessible, it is only a matter of time before it is broken. When officials, such as the government, have a phone in their hands, that phone is essentially dormant; it is a perfect, unchanging snapshot in time.

The phone does not receive software updates or patches because it is not in the user’s hands; This means that any vulnerabilities that were present when compromised remain intact. This is very important because forensic technology continues to advance and new methods or tools to break into phones are constantly being developed.

While existing tools like Cellebrite or Graykey cannot currently unlock the phone due to security reasons, the phone’s frozen state means new techniques will eventually come into play as the technology advances.

Since the phone’s security hasn’t improved or been updated, it’s only a matter of time before future forensics tools become sophisticated enough to crack it. Essentially, the phone remains locked in time, but technology continues to advance, constantly increasing the chances of unlocking the phone.