iOS 7 Lockscreen Bug Lets You Bypass Passcode to Access All Photos, Send Email, Tweet [Video]

A new bug found in iOS 7, lets you bypass the lockscreen passcode to access all the photos on an iOS device and send emails and tweets, reports Andy Greenberg for Forbes.

Jose Rodriguez, a 36-year-old soldier living in Spain’s Canary Islands, found the security vulnerability and shared it with Greenberg.

Rodriguez has a track record of finding lockscreen bypass bugs in iOS, many of which he says he dug up while killing time in his old job as a driver for government officials. “I had a lot of time to look at the scenery, break the phone or write poetry while waiting for my boss, and I don’t write poetry and already knew the landscape by heart,” he tells me via instant message and Google translate. So he spent hours “trying everything that goes through my head…I submit my iPhone to cruel methods of torture.”


To perform the technique, the user's device must have Control Center enabled on the Lockscreen. First, launch the Timer app from Control Center then press and hold the power button until the power slider appears. As you tap cancel, double press the Home button to bring up the Multitasking switcher. Thankfully, the only app that can be switched to is Camera; however, tapping the last photo taken thumbnail at the bottom left will bring up the entire camera roll. Then tapping any photo will let you email, tweet, or share from the accounts that have been setup on the device.

You can see the technique demonstrated in the video below. We've tried it and verified that it does indeed work as described.

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