A bug that has been confirmed on both iOS 11 and iOS 11.1 beta allows hackers to bypass the passcode of an iPhone and access the photos stored in the gallery by simply dialing your phone number.
Discovered by YouTube iDeviceHelp, this bug can be exploited by dialing the phone number of the locked iPhone. To gain unauthorized access, the exploit also involves invoking Siri, so if the digital assistant is disabled on your device, you’re on the safe side.
As you can see for yourselves in the video at the end of the article, the method is quite complex and even though it’s hard to believe that someone would discover it by mistake, there’s a chance that it becomes more popular as tech websites report it. Disable Siri on the lock screen. On the other hand, it’s important to know that to stay protected, all you have to do is to disable Siri on the lock screen, as the digital assistant is being used to get access to the photo gallery. iDeviceHelp says they have already contacted Apple to report the bug and hopefully the company would release a fix in the next update.
As we’ve seen several times before, Apple isn’t very keen on shipping such updates too fast, though the company does patch security bugs at some point, but given that a very complex passcode bypass method is involved, the firm most likely doesn’t see any reason to hurry up.
On the good side, the hacker needs to have physical access to your device, so even if you don’t disable Siri on the lock screen, it would be quite impossible to expose your photos if you always keep an eye on the iPhone. Not the same thing can be said if the iPhone gets stolen, in which case Find My iPhone comes in pretty handy, though it’s pretty clear than update from Apple would also be pretty welcome.
