Apple has not had a lot of luck the last quarter. First losing a huge case to Samsung, issues with declining sales, and battery woes in the iPhone and MacBook Pro.
iPad activation lock hacked
The feature which is supposed to keep thieves from being able to format and use a stolen iPhone has been hacked.
Indian security specialist Hemanth Joseph applied the procedure to a locked iPad purchased from eBay.
The lock feature is supposed to be engaged whenever a user activates it through iCloud. Once the feature is activated, it’s supposed to be impossible to activate the device without entering the appropriate password associated with the iCloud account.
How he hacked the iPad
However, from the lock screen, WiFi can be accessed and manually configured. The reason for this is that the phone must be able to connect to the internet to determine if the password is correct.
Mr Joseph used the fields in WPA2-Enterprise fields to enter huge strings of random characters which crashed the iPad.
He then used an iPad smart cover to put the iPad to sleep, and then reopened it. This procedure is supposed to bring the iPad back to the state it was in when it crashed. In this case, entering the WiFi name and password screen. According to Mr Joseph, “After 20-25 seconds the Add Wifi Connection screen crashed to the iPad home screen, thereby bypassing the so-called Find My iPhone Activation Lock.”
This hack was done on iOS 10.1.
And another
After Mr Joseph’s success, another user from Germany accomplished the same result with a very similar method, this time on iOS 10.1.1.
In addition the method Mr Joseph employed, Kunz Mejri rotated the iPad to help trigger the crash.
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