Comment by dangus

I’m all for a system that allows you to wipe the device to do a downgrade or upgrade (just like any PC with an unset bios password allows) but the idea that it’s a good design for someone without my OS password to be able to downgrade my OS or perform any operation on my OS is insane.

What’s even the point of setting a password if anyone can manipulate the system without entering it in?

The entire iPhone OS is on an encrypted volume and that is the right design choice. Not having the password means no access.

There is no general purpose encrypted volume operating system that allows unauthenticated users to perform OS manipulation. If you encrypt your FreeBSD, Linux, or Windows volume, the result is the same: no password, no access.

Your choice is to enter the correct password or wipe the disk.

The fact that Apple doesn’t allow you to set up a system without full disk encryption is not a user freedom issue, it’s a very sensible design choice especially for a device sold primarily to non-technical consumers who don’t understand the security implications of leaving the volume unencrypted.

The issue here isn’t that iOS security is designed wrong, the issue is that Apple broke basic password entry with an update.

Shame on Apple for having such lazy software development practices when it comes to implementing updates like this.