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September 23, 2013

Soldier Living Overseas Discovers iOS 7 Bug That Lets You Bypass Lockscreen

Thirty-six-year-old Jose Rodriguez is a soldier living in Spain’s Canary Islands. Recently he discovered a 'security vulnerability' in the iOS 7. This vulnerability allows anyone to bypass its lockscreen in a matter of seconds. Once the system is bypassed, a hacker would have instant access photos, e-mail, Twitter accounts and more.

Rodriguez made a video that clearly shows anyone can do this. One must simply use the bug by swiping up on the lockscreen to access the phone’s “control center.” After this step, you simply open up the alarm clock. Hold down the phones sleep button, and then it brings you to the screen option to power it off with a simple swipe. At this point, instead of powering off, simply tap cancel and double-click the home button to easily enter the phone’s multitasking screen. The multitasking screen gives you instant access to its camera, photos and the ability to share them from the user's accounts, such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and more.

Rodriguez’s video shows that the method also works on an iPads too. It is unknown if this glitch can bypass the lockscreen on iPhone 5S or 5C, but Rodriguez feels that it will.

This is not Rodriguez's first time finding lockscreen bugs in iOS. He said he discovered these bugs while ‘killing time in his old job as a driver for government officials.'

“I had a lot of time to look at the scenery, break the phone or write poetry while waiting for my boss, and I don’t write poetry and already knew the landscape by heart. Trying everything that goes through my head…I submit my iPhone to cruel methods of torture.”

Back in March, Rodriguez discovered a trick to bypass the lockscreen of iOS 6.1.3 and another in iOS 7 beta. That beta bug was corrected in later versions of iOS 7, but within an hour of downloading the latest iPhone operating system, by adapting tricks that worked on iOS 5 and 6, Rodriguez discovered another one.

According to a post on Apple's Security Mailing List, the latest version of iOS patches 80 security vulnerabilities. Rodriguez has proven that the company missed a big one. 




Edited by Alisen Downey


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