If you’re an iPhone user, you probably strut among your friends claiming how secure and how unbreakable your phone is. It doesn’t explode, it doesn’t melt, and even the FBI can’t force Apple to help break through an iPhone. If none of these could make you love the iPhone, nothing else could.
But here’s something that might make you wonder about the security features in your iPhone: iDeviceHelp has found a bug on an iPhone 6 that would make your photos vulnerable to hackers even without a passcode. And that means anyone who gets hold of your iPhone can access your photos even when your phone is locked.
It’s a lengthy and complex procedure, and you probably don’t have to worry about it. But if you want to replicate the bug, here’s how the bug works.
- Call (FaceTime works too) the number of the phone that you want to break into. (If you don’t know the number you can always ask Siri, “who am I” and he/she will give you the details.)
- When the call comes in, choose the “Message” option and then “Custom.” So now you will be able to reply to the call with a message.
- Then enable the Voice Over mode. This will let you narrate the message you want to send. Just say “Turn on Voice Over” and Siri will turn on the feature.
- Double tap on the “To” field (the recipient) in the message while simultaneously tapping a random key on the keypad. This opens up the tools section in messages, letting you browse through a list of existing contacts.
- Press the info (“i”) icon next to a contact, and then create a new contact.
- You’re almost there. Choose the option to add a photo to the new contact you just created. This will open up the camera roll and you can access all the photos.
And all these, without even unlocking the phone!
It might seem easy enough on paper, but you may not be able to recreate the bug because Apple would’ve taken counter measures almost immediately. Plenty of videos are cropping up on YouTube demonstrating the bug, but you can rest assured; breaking into an iPhone is not as easy as it sounds. Besides, this is a pretty lengthy hack and to pull it off, a hacker would need access to your iPhone for a long time — which is a pretty far-fetched situation. However, if you’re really worried about your phone, just disable Siri while the phone’s locked.
