[hannasanarion]

IPhones are probably vulnerable to cold boot too. It's just that cold boot attacks are absurdly difficult to execute. They only work if you already have physical access to an unlocked device before it powers down. If you shut off your machine and wait two seconds before walking away, you can never be cold-booted

[hyperpape]

Are you sure/can you provide sources? Given the substantial efforts law enforcement has been taking to get access to suspects' iPhones, this doesn't seem right.

[hannasanarion]

I think you misread me. IPhones are almost certainly vulnerable to some kind of cold-boot attack, yes. That doesn't mean that it's easy to break into them. Cold-boot attacks are highly circumstantial.

If the San Bernadino terrorists shut down their phones before their murderous rampage, or if they ran out of battery before the FBI got into their house, sorry, no cold boot for you.

Cold boot only works if you have physical access to the unlocked, powered-on, in-use device. The "data ghost" in memory that cold boot attacks take advantage of is only there for seconds.

[albntomat0]

The commenter above specifically says powered on, unlocked. If the phone is locked or powered off, things are much harder.

[hyperpape]

I guess I was confused by "If you shut off your machine", which is not the same thing as locking it.

If cold boot attacks only work against unlocked devices, that makes a lot of sense. But if they work against locked but powered devices, that would be quite possible for LE to exploit in most cases (just carry a battery pack).

[rasz]

kinda hard when your ram is soldered on top of BGA cpu