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If you think that your iPhone is impenetrable thanks to its security passcode, think again. A new bug has been exposed in iOS 5.0.1 that allows unauthorised access to contacts and the calling features of the iPhone.
Admitedly, it is a long-winded hack that involves inserting and ejecting the SIM card whilst trying to call the iPhone in question. Done for long enough, that opens up the contacts app, and also allows the unauthorised user to make phone calls.
iPhoneislam, the makers of the video, claim it’s a “major” problem, but it’s certainly not the kind of thing someone could do surreptitiously in a bar. Still, if someone managed to steal your phone, it would open up your contacts for them. Presumably this will be fixed in the public release of iOS 5.1. [iPhoneislam via The Verge]
“it’s certainly not the kind of thing someone could do surreptitiously in a bar.” – If it’s Grey Powell’s phone you wouldn’t need to do it surreptitiously, he’s probably wandered off and left it again.
Yeah, while most bugs are fairly worrying, I’m sure I’ll sleep easy tonight knowing that if someone is trying to get into my phone this way, they’ll have starved to death way before they actually manage it!
How did they even work this out?!
Think the most significant part of this is that the person would need the telephone number of the phone in question. Which I guess means that it’s only useful as a hack to “friends” and family…
It’s probably good to know how to do this as most everybody knows someone who has forgotten their pin code for something at some time.
Yeah but if it only allows access to your contacts then the phone still isn’t that much use. You’ve just ended up with a £400 personal phone book.
Gah, no edit button.
I meant £400 dumb phone.
What I was trying to get at was that you can’t really do much with this hack apart from call your friends to say you’re a berk and you’ve forgotten your pin number.
If you’re the kind of idiot who forgets his/her pin you could always set up a contact whose phone number is your pin (disguised). That way you could hack into your phone and find out the pin. Long winded and stupid it may seem but if you are stupid enough to forget a number you use several times a day you need all the help you can get.
Pfew, it only allows access to the contacts
Darn, I just lost 3 minutes and 46 seconds of my life watching that.
You can just hear the iPhone 4 thinking “You know what, your a persistent git, now view the contacts, stop fiddling with my bits and leave me the hell alone.”
Another security bug for an iDevice but at the end of the day if someone gets hold of the hardware, bug or not, they will find a way into it.