Me di cuenta de que todos malinterpretan el soporte BFU (incluyéndome a mí)

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of presenting at Techno East in Wilmington, as well as helping out at the XRY Pro booth. Between coffee-fueled talks and demonstrations on how to identify test points, I spent a lot of time showing off what XRY Pro can do, especially in regards to our BFU support.

Now, BFU (Before First Unlock) support is something I've proudly talked about for years. We've been doing it with confidence for a long time: accessing locked and reset phones. I always assumed that was something everyone knew.

Spoiler: It wasn't.

“So…what do you think BFU support means?”

That was the question I started asking the visitors to the stand. And the answers were… consistent.

I always received something like:

“It's a basic extraction – mostly just the DE partition.”

Which, technically, is correct… for some tools.

But here's the problem: When we say “BFU support”, we mean something totally different.

At MSAB, when we talk about BFU, we refer to thestatethe device is on – locked and reset – not atlimitationsof the extraction. It is the state that we are capable of attacking. BFU support means we can brute force the PIN and unlock almost everything: user data, messages, apps, photos – the entire file system. But unless I clarify that we are actually brute forcing the device into that state, most assume it is a partial or limited removal.

That's when it hit me: maybe we've been underestimating ourselves.

The moment of “Let's see if it's true”

A rather skeptical visitor told me, more or less:

“Sounds good, but I'll believe it when I see it.”

Challenge accepted.

I took out my own phone – locked, reset and updated – and did a live demo with XRY Pro.

As the extraction progressed, I explained that the brute force process occurs in the decoding stage, not during acquisition. He stared.

I chose a PIN length and we watched the XRY Pro get to work.

A few moments later – boom! – decrypted my real PIN (which, yes, I changed immediately afterwards).
"User data decrypted. Full access achieved. This is what true BFU support means."

The visitor was visibly impressed, and I later learned that he placed an order for XRY Pro a week later.

What did I learn?

While I've spoken confidently about our BFU support for years, it turns out that phrase isn't always understood as we think. For many, it still means “limited system data.”

But what we actually offer isbrute force in BFU state– a completely different level of access.

It was a great reminder that, in this industry, language matters almost as much as technology. We can build the most powerful tools in the world, but if we don't clearly explain what they do, we risk being misunderstood.

By Christopher Kraft, Professional Services Consultant at MSAB.