Your iPhone and iPad can be hacked by unscrupulous. I’m glad Lau did the research and Apple invited him to test it out on the IOS7 waiting release.
“A hacker with less-than-noble intentions can hide a computer in a charging device or a bigger object, like a music docking station. Once connected, it can generate its own provisional profile and gain access to both iPhones and iPads.
SIM Hack Can Expose Cell Phones to Crooks
A hacker also isn’t limited to a single device.
“There are Apple lounges with USB charging stations,” said Lau. “It’s a prime target that the [hacker] can use to reach many devices quickly.”
If a charging station has been tampered with, then the hacker can gain access to many phones very quickly.
Lau and his colleagues notified Apple about the security flaw shortly after their presentation was approved for Black Hat back in May. Apple invited them to test their hack on a beta version of iOS7, the newest version of the operating system that is yet to be released.
“The device will now ask if you want to trust the computer you plug it into,” said Lau.
However, Lau added that users might not know that the computer or peripheral they plugged into is an untrustworthy computer and can still be vulnerable to the hack.
“Fixes for the charger pairing vulnerability have been addressed in the latest beta of iOS7,” Tom Neumayer, a spokesman for Apple, told ABC News. “We would like to thank the researchers for their valuable input.”
Apple’s proactive effort to fix the bug surprised Lau.
“Most of the time, Apple just seems to not respond or pretend that there is no problem,” he said. “We demonstrated the weakness and it seems that, this time, they are really trying to do something.””
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