Your iPhone passcode can be easily unlocked with a little machine
A company has manufactured a new gadget that can easily bypass Apple’s secure iPhone security systems. This also includes Apple’s iPhone X. The company is retailing the unit for just $15,000 each.
Grayshift, a company who is manufacturing the device, is said to be selling the devices only to law enforcement firms. The device is known as GrayKey, and the unit has been in the news, reported by Malwarebytes. The device is a simple gray box with two Lightning cables at one end.
Last year, this device started making news about how it could break into the iPhone’s security and bypass passcodes. The company based in Atlanta, Georgia, was founded in 2016 and is a private firm with less than 50 employees.
Malwarebytes gained access to a photo of the device, and how it works, from an unknown source.
The device is a gray box four by four by two inches in dimension and has two lightning cables sticking out from the front end. Two iPhones can be connected simultaneously and are left connected for around two minutes. The iPhones don’t immediately open up, but after some time, the phones’ displays go black with the passcode and some more information displayed on it. The source said that the iPhone cracking procedure takes around two hours each, and depends on the length of the passcode. He also mentioned that sometimes it can take up to three days or longer for 6-digit code-locked iPhones. The company also states that disables iPhones can also be cracked open with this gray box.
Once the iPhone is broken into, all the data/contents of the phone are then downloaded to the device itself. The data can then be accessed through a web-based interface, connected to a computer system. This data also contains fully unencrypted contents of the keychain.
The device is said to work on the latest iPhones and up to iOS 11.2.5. The $15,000 device requires an internet connection and is strictly locked on to the network it is authenticated to. This means that the device cannot operate on any other internet connection apart from the one it is registered to.
The device has another variant which is retailing at double the cost ($30,000), which does not need an internet connection to operate and has no limitations to the number of iPhones it can crack.
The devices will operate till Apple takes charge and fixes the vulnerabilities this device takes advantage of.
Photos courtesy: Malwarebytes
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