The Silicon Review ^Asia

Matthew Hickey (co-founder, House cybersecurity) has discovered a way to bypass an iPhone device’s security feature using a technique that will surely unlock it. Following certain conditions, it is possible for an iPhone to be hacked. A hacker will only need an iPhone (turned on and locked) and a lighting cable. Using a plugged-in iPhone, a hacker can send numerous passcodes through keyboard inputs. This action will trigger an interrupt request that will take precedence over everything else and eventually make an iPhone too busy to erase the device. This is caused because of the constant passcodes being sent one after the other. Hence, a hacker is not restricted to 10 guesses.

Hickey has reported the vulnerability to Apple and it is believed that there are probably other people who have already implemented this technique. A clear example would be a company called Cellebrite that unlocked San Bernardino shooter’s phone and also the developers of GrayKey (iPhone hacker/cracker) would have used similar technique because of the same bug.

This is why Cupertino upgraded iOS 12 with Restrict Mode that will cut off an iPhone’s ability to connect to any USB accessory that is plugged into it after an hour. Keep in mind that, it takes more than an hour to send a device every passcode combination and hence making it harder for a hacker to crack into a device from an external force. Apple has always topped the charts and we may see it in the future as well because they keep updating in order to avoid hacking.