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Let’s just say iOS 6.1 hasn’t been Apple’s finest hour. So far it’s been plagued with connection issues, battery woes, and now it’s totally insecure. You can simply bypass any lockcode on an iPhone using a pretty straightforward sequence of button presses. Oh Apple, what the hell happened here?
I have no idea how one would actually figure this out in the first place, but the instructions are pretty simple not that they’ve gone through all the effort. First you have to pretend to turn the phone off, then make an aborted emergency call, then a quick bit of off button and cancel pressing. That boots you into the full phone app where you can pretty much call or message anyone you like. Or in fact, change someone’s contact details to confuse the hell out of them.
Hopefully Apple pushes out a fix for this pretty soon, as any bottom feeder could rack up a load of premium-rate phone calls in a matter of minutes if they pinched your beloved iPhone. Apple’s slipping, a little bit more each day. [YouTube via S1riOS6]
i too wonder how people stumble across these things. i say stumble because i hope people don’t spend hours and hours trying to find these bugs. well, i guess it’s a hobby.
they need to get our more imo
I know, right? I mean, it must have taken hours, and really, how the hell would you come up with that combo? Boggles the mind.
It’s pretty much the same as finding the exploits required to jailbreak phones – of course people spend a long time finding those things, as a lot of people want their phones jailbroken, and there’s a lot of kudos attached to being the person who finds something new.
you’re right, i guess ‘unexpected input’ is one of the more accessible methods for the vulnerability hobbyist, and getting through a lock screen is also an obviously a neat trick for someone to go for. i guess it’s the new Rubik cube.
It’s come up before, the old dial an emergency number to get into the phone book.
It’s not as difficult as you’d think, I mean it’s logical. The emergency phone call system uses the ‘phone’ function, so if you can start that up then you’re already through the lock screen (effectively). Once you’re there what buttons will allow you to access the rest of the phone?
I can’t remember which version had this before, it was about two years ago I think.
Its pretty limited though. You can’t access the users data, web history etc. I still feel pretty secure. But I’m sure Apple will add a bug fix to their list!
I saw a similar bug like this on an old version of ios which involved a similar thing but ejecting the sim card and putting it back in!
Some people do need to get out more!
Have to agree with the slipping comment! I put of switching to Apple for ages and when I did about 18 months ago, ever since they keep having these little slips!
*off
This loophole isn’t something I need to worry about – I never have the passcode facility activated.
so you haven’t got any kind of protection?
No. I did a risk assessment and came to the view that my phone is never out of my sight so that I would take the risk. If I did have it activated it would give me more hassle from the kids trying to guess the code than the risk of it being stolen. I may well come a cropper in the future, but I just cannot be bothered to have to tap in a code every few minutes whenever I pick up my phone.
It’s not just me that doesn’t bother with a code then.
Well, I managed to get it to work, but frankly it’s more than a bit of a hassle, not least the fact that if you dont time it perfectly you cant release the power button or it locks the screen again. And if you do screw up you have to repeat from the start. Amazing that he’d mess around that long to find this though…