Huge iPhone Security Flaw Uncovered : Lock Screen Useless
Things are really going from bad to worse for Apple at the moment. MobileMe-Gate was swiftly followed by 3G connection issues, and most recently the yanking of an iPhone ad over ‘misleading’ browsing claims.
Now the security of the iPhone itself is in question, thanks to a simple little loophole which means that the passcode lock can be bypassed with a little ingenuity.
In a move familiar to jailbreakers in the good old days, the iPhone allows emergency calls to be made even if unregistered to iTunes, or if a screen lock is applied to the handset.
However, a double press of the iPhone’s ‘home’ button from the emergency call keypad allows access to whichever menu it is assigned to. For some it is access to the iPod, but the default is to the user’s favourite contacts.
If you’ve been unlucky enough to have set up full details of friends or clients in here, this allows access to your e-mails, the Safari browser, phone contacts or even Google Map directions to your boss’s house, all from a supposedly secure phone.
Oddly, this problem was fixed way back in January’s v1.1.3 update but must have been lost somewhere along the way to the 2.0 mess of lag and broken reception that owners are currently enjoying.
Needless to say this is being taken seriously by Apple and will be fixed…again, but do you get the feeling that this phone business is becoming more trouble than it is worth for them?
With App Store sales booming and no sign of declining interest in the iPhone 3G in the consumer sector, we guess not.
However, problems with the major sticking points of security and e-mail must be seriously damaging their reputation in the eyes of the very business users they were trying so hard to impress…
