Two researchers claim to have found a way to prevent activation of iOS lock feature which prevents that nobody can use an iPhone or an iPad whose owner has communicated its loss.
The first report came the Sunday from a researcher of security Indian called Hemanth Joseph, who began to investigate possible forms of avoid it on an iPad locked that acquired through eBay with the version iOS 10.1, that was released the 24 of October.
The lock of activation is active automatically when the users activated the function search my iPhone through iCloud. Connects the device to their ID of Apple e prevents that nobody can access to the same without entering the password that has associated.
One of the few things that are allowed from the blockade of activation of iOS screen is connect the device to a Wi-Fi network, including the manual of one configuration. Hemanth had the idea of trying to circumvent the lock of screen introducing chains very long of characters in them fields of name of user and password of WPA2-Enterprise.
The researcher says that after a while, the screen froze, used the Smart Cover iPad sold by Apple to put the iPad to sleep and then opened it. This is supposed that returns the iPad to the State in which is had left, in this case, loading the screen WPA2 again with the long strings of characters that had introduced.
“After 20-25 seconds, the screen to add a WiFi network jumped to the home screen of the iPad, avoiding the so-called blockade of activation of find my iPhone”, said in his blog entry.
Hemanth said that communicated the problem to Apple the 4 of November, and that the company it is investigating.
On Thursday, another researcher named Benjamin Kunz Mejri, of the German team Vulnerability Lab, published a video showing the same method, but in the new version of iOS 10.1.1.
Kunz Mejri method is similar and also involves entering long strings of characters in form fields to add a new wireless network, but also requires to rotate the Tablet’s screen to turn off the lock after the Smart Cover trick.
Apple has not yet confirmed this problem.
