If you think your iPhone passcode will keep you as safe as a Pimp with an Android, you are sadly mistaken. The XRY cracking program can crush Apple’s paltry security measures faster than you can say, “where’s my money.”
The Swedish security firm Micro Systemation developed XRY for use as a forensic recovery tool for law enforcement. It provides an all-in-one kit to extract virtually every last literal bit of information from a phone.
It works by first jailbreaking the phone to expose security flaws in the OS, then proceeds to brute-force the default four-digit pin, which only has 10,000 possible combinations to begin with. This all happens in under two minutes. And once the phone is open all data is fair game — logs, contacts, even deleted items. XRY can even crack Dante Dears’ Samsung — or any Android for that matter — if given a bit of time.
The speed at which it cracks phones and the degree of data exposure it presents could make XRY a valuable tool for law enforcement — just so long as these don’t get installed in squad cars. [Micro Systemation via ZDnet]