# Pair Locking your iPhone with Configurator 2

DevFeed: [Pair Locking your iPhone with Configurator 2](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/pair-locking-your-iphone-with-configurator-2-41994.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://arkadiyt.com/2019/10/07/pair-locking-your-iphone-with-configurator-2/>)

Published: 2019-10-07T07:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Arkadiy Tetelman](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/arkadiy-tetelman.md>)

Topics: [iphone](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/iphone.md>), [Security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/security.md>), [iOS](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ios.md>), [bootrom](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/bootrom.md>), [locking](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/locking.md>), [Authentication](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/authentication.md>)

Tags: [authentication](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/authentication.md>), [bootrom](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bootrom.md>), [forensic](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/forensic.md>), [ios](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ios.md>), [iphone](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/iphone.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>)

## AI overview

A tutorial on pair-locking an iPhone with Configurator 2 to prevent forensic tools from pairing with the device, imaging it, scanning its contents, or extracting app authentication tokens. It explains the privacy rationale and how pairing works.

## Source excerpt

In response to the recent iphone bootrom bug (and also because I was already in the market for a new phone), I recently purchased a new iPhone XR. This gave me a chance to re-run the steps required to pair lock the device, a process which prevents law enforcement from using forensics tools against your phone, and the result of which is this blog post. It covers: Why pair lock your device? How does it work? Supervising and pair locking your device Why pair lock your device? It's an unfortunate state of affairs but people's digital privacy is increasingly under attack by law enforcement agencies, especially at protests, airports, and border crossings. Articles like the following have become all too common: A US-born NASA scientist was detained at the border until he unlocked his phone Man sues feds after being detained for refusing to unlock his phone at airport Phone and laptop searches at US border 'quadruple' US deports foreign student 'over friends' social media posts' Are Police Searching Inauguration Protesters' Phones? and closer to my home in San Francisco we see tweets like this one: By pair locking your device you will prevent iPhone forensics tools from being able to connect to your device, image it, scan through your messages and camera roll, read your contacts and call history, etc - even if you've been compelled by law enforcement to unlock your device! They can still manually look through your unlocked phone contents, but they can't image the device for offline analysis, they can't run automated content scanners, and they no longer get access to your various app authentication tokens. I originally learned about this feature / unintended side effect from Jonathan Zdziarski's excellent blog post about it. Jonathan was a well-known iOS security researcher who now works on Apple's security team. Unfortunately since joining Apple he stopped blogging about iOS security (and deleted his twitter), and the instructions in his original 2014 blog are now slightly