Subscribe by EmailDon’t Trust That iPhone Password
September 4, 2008 by Jimmy Rogers | 4 comments
By Jimmy Rogers
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Our own Mark O’Neill clued me in to this little gem. The Register is reporting that the iPhone may not be as secure as once thought. While the new “enterprise” features are supposedly state of the art, there is an easy hack available to bypass one of the security features in the first version of the firmware.
Some people on the MacRumors forums claim that it is possible to press the Emergency Call key and then double-tap the home key. This will apparently give hackers access to the phone’s “favorites” section, which, in turn, can be used to enter other parts of the phone, including the browser and the email client.
For the moment, you can go into your general settings and change the “double click on home” option to “home.” This should prevent the hack.
While this is a obviously a serious misstep for Apple, it is likely they will come out with a fix in the next firmware update. Even so, for a device that is trying to gain credibility in the business world, little things like this certainly don’t help.
[Image via ModMyiFone]
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Funny, this doesn’t work on my iPhone. (3G with 2.0.2 firmware…custom though…)
Also, what’s up with the fake picture? I mean, comon, if you’re going to write a flame story, at least try not to look like a newbie while you do it. :(
I don’t use the passcode feature myself. It seems like a logical oversight though, as the “emergency call” feature would dip into the unprotected part of the phone in order to call out. It may only be on certain subversions of the firmware or something like that.
How is this a flame story? There’s an issue with the iPhone’s security and that’s all there is to it.
:) The fake picture is there because I assumed you already knew what the passcode screen looks like. Here’s one in case you don’t: http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/HT1212/306821_1.jpg
Flame article? We’re just reporting the news friend, and that screen looks like the passcode screen… nothing wrong with this.
Not a “flame” article. I recently found out about this too, but word of mouth. This is exactly the kind of thing that should be reported so that people become aware of the security vulnerabilities before it’s too late… Like the biometric mock-up too.