Anyone Can Bypass Your iOS 7 Lockscreen To See (And Share!) Your Photos


Got fancy new iOS 7 on that iPhone of yours? Beware. There’s a simple bug that can let anyone blow right by your lockscreen and look through your pictures and even share them.

The process was discovered by Jose Rodriguez. Even though it has quite a few steps, it’s easy to master. Here’s how it works:

  • Swipe up on the locked phone to get to the control panel
  • Open the stopwatch app
  • Go over to alarm clock
  • Hold the power button until you get the “Power down” prompt
  • Hit the cancel button and immediately hit the home button twice, holding it down just a little longer on the second press. Like, buh-baah. It takes a try or two to get the hang of.

Then, bam, you’re in the target’s multitasking menu and can start goofing around. If you go to the camera app, you’ll be treated to unrestricted access to the Photo Stream, and you can share the pictures from there with email, Twitter,and more. It’s pretty scary. This isn’t the first time a bug like this has showed up in iOS either.

We were able to replicate the bug on an iPhone 4s and an iPhone 5, and Jose has shown it off working on an iPad as well. We can’t tell for sure if it works on the iPhone 5s or 5c yet, but there’s little reason to think it wouldn’t.

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment, and there’s no doubt it will be issuing a fix in the near future. In the meantime, just be aware that your photos aren’t safe from prying eyes. The prying eyes of an up-to-date nerd at least. [Jose Rodriguez via Forbes]

Update: You can fight this by turning off the Control Center access on the lockscreen. Just go to Settings, Control Center, and set Lockscreen Access to off. But lockscreen Control Center is awesome, and it’s on by default. So maybe just don’t leave your phone with creeps?


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