Apple made Lockdown Mode for people at high risk

CART couldn’t get anything from the iPhone. “Because the iPhone was in Lockdown mode, CART could not extract that device,” the government filing said.

The government also submitted a declaration by FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky that said the agency “has paused any further efforts to extract this device because of the Court’s Standstill Order.” The FBI did extract information from the SIM card “with an auto-generated HTML report created by the tool utilized by CART,” but “the data contained in the HTML was limited to the telephone number.”

Apple says that LockDown Mode “helps protect devices against extremely rare and highly sophisticated cyber attacks,” and is “designed for the very few individuals who, because of who they are or what they do, might be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats.”

Introduced in 2022, Lockdown Mode is available for iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It must be enabled separately for each device. To enable it on an iPhone or iPad, a user would open the Settings app, tap Privacy & Security, scroll down and tap Lockdown Mode, and then tap Turn on Lockdown Mode.

The process is similar on Macs. In the System Settings app that can be accessed via the Apple menu, a user would click Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Lockdown Mode, and then click Turn On.

“When Lockdown Mode is enabled, your device won’t function like it typically does,” Apple says. “To reduce the attack surface that potentially could be exploited by highly targeted mercenary spyware, certain apps, websites, and features are strictly limited for security and some experiences might not be available at all.”

Lockdown Mode blocks most types of message attachments, blocks FaceTime calls from people you haven’t contacted in the past 30 days, restricts the kinds of browser technologies that websites can use, limits photo sharing, and imposes other restrictions. Users can exclude specific apps and websites they trust from these restrictions, however.