The IT Nerd

Unlike the issue that I wrote about earlier today, this one is a real problem. Here’s the deal as described by MacRumors. To hack into an iPhone that has it’s screen locked, all you have to do is this:

• Swipe upwards on the lock screen to access the Control Center
• Open the Clock app
• Hold the phone’s sleep button until you see “Slide to Power Off”
• Tapping on cancel and then double clicking on the home button will open the phone’s multitasking screen
• You now have access to the camera and the photos. The key to the trick, however, is to access the camera app from the lock screen first, causing it to appear in the recently used apps list. Because the photos from the camera app can be shared via Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and email, an intruder can also gain access to those apps using the sharing tools.

When I tried it, I could not reproduce this. But the person who found this posted a video to YouTube to prove that this exists:

Now this isn’t the first lock screen bug the iPhone has had, but it’s never good when these bugs exist. The best way to keep yourself safe is to turn off Control Center:

• Go to Settings
• Go to Control Center
• Find Access On Lock Screen and turn it off

As usual, there’s no comment from Apple. But it’s a safe bet that this will get addressed in an update that’s coming soon to an iPhone near you.

UPDATE: It took me three tries, but I was able to reproduce this.

UPDATE #2: Apple has told AllThingsD that it is working on a fix.

This entry was posted on September 19, 2013 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, iOS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.