The iPhone 7 handset can be cracked easily as shown in a new video. Using a small box, an industry insider was able to unlock the phone by guessing a series of passcode attempts.
On Friday, a well-known YouTube channel dedicated to Apple products posted a video showing a tiny US$500 box being used to infiltrate an iPhone 7 locked with a passcode. The box can also unlock an iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6.
How it works
For the uninitiated, the small box discussed in here is the same to those used by cybersecurity professionals. What it does is it continuously guesstimates an iPhone's passcode in a series of attempts until it unlocks the device.
Apparently, Apple devices powered by passcodes only allow thrice or so attempts to enter the magic numbers. But with iOS 10, the software currently has a bug that lets hackers unlock an iPhone through successive attempts even if they are wrong, given that the passcode was changed few minutes before the hacking.
To summarise, here are the conditions why the iPhone can be unlocked by the box. First, if the device is an iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6. Second, there is a change in the passcode made very recently. Third, the iPhone is not used for more than 10 minutes after the passcode change. Lastly, the iPhone has a four-digit passcode.
What to do
According to TechCrunch, Apple is planning to patch this bug in the final iOS 11. As for now, it has also been fixed through iOS 11 beta 4. You might be wondering if this bug will still be effective to devices not enrolled in Apple's beta program.
The answer is a definitive yes. Now, what can you do to avoid it?
To prevent your iPhone from being cracked, you have to change your passcode with a six-digit one. Why? Because it would take more than a year to unlock the device using a combination of six digits. Four-digit passcodes can easily be guessed after three days of shuffling numbers.
