It has only been a day since iOS7 was launched and yet a security glitch has already emerged. This iOS7 hack allows anyone to simply grab someone else’s iPad or iPhone and hijack private content such as photos, email, Twitter, an Facebook. Here is a summary of how to do it:
- Swipe up from the bottom of the screen when the phone is locked to bring up the control center.
- Press the camera app icon to open the camera and then press the home button to quit out. You will be back at the lock screen.
- Swipe up again, select the timer icon.
- Hold down the lock screen button to bring up the switch off phone option.
- Cancel the switch off phone option and immediately press the home screen button twice (there is a bit of timing here, some users are saying that a longer second press helps).
- Swipe through multitasking to the camera app and select it.
- You can now access all the photos on the phone by selecting them from the camera roll in the bottom left corner.
Note: you need not click over to the alarm clock when you bring up the timer. In addition you may end up with a copy of the multitasking first screen pasted over the timer app (like this), which is actually multitasking open on top of the timer. If you lock the phone from the timer rather than pressing the home button this goes away. If you don’t get it to go away when the phone is unlocked via passcode it will launch in multitasking and that can look suspect. (credit to user genuinelyanf of Reddit)
Additionally, you don’t need to open the camera app, but then you don’t get access to the phone. The only things you can do is browse through the phones open apps and close them by swiping up.
In addition to the above there is another hack that allows you to make calls without entering the password. The steps are listed below.
- Press the on / off button.
- Slide the notification screen up.
- Select alarm / clock.
- Press and hold the on / off button until “slide to turn off” and “cancel” comes into the screen.
- Press cancel and directly twice on the home button.
- The multitask screen will be opened.
- Keep the home button pressed until the Voice Control comes into the screen.
- You now say “call” with the number you want to call.
With an adoption rate of as high as 34% and growing, this is a major security concern and Apple spokeswoman Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller has already released a statement that they are aware of the issue and will deliver a fix in a software update.
“Apple takes user security very seriously. We are aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update.” – Trudy Miller, Spokesperson, Apple Inc.
Despite this we are not too convinced that Apple is working as fast as it should be to address this major security concern. That said we are hoping these are merely growing pains for iOS7, which is still at its infancy.
For now a number of quick fixes have appeared to fix or at least prevent these hacks from working (credit to Forbes.com):
- One way is to prevent the control center from appearing on the lockscreen. To do this, simply access the phone’s settings and look for “Control Center”.
- Another is by turning on Assistive Touch. This can be done by going to General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut
- Finally, this bug does not seem to work if you have Siri enabled, so to prevent this security glitch simply enable Siri
Did any of these suggestions work for you? Are you affected by the iOS7 bug? Leave us a comment!