Mon 27 February 2023:
The passcode that iPhone users use to unlock their devices is now making it simple for thieves to steal their data and money in public areas.
Thieves watch iPhone owners tap their passcodes, then steal their targets’ phones and digital lives, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A 31-year-old senior economist at a workforce intelligence business had her iPhone 13 Pro Max stolen from a bar in Midtown Manhattan. She lost all of the images, contacts, and notes on the device, and within a day, roughly $10,000 had vanished from her bank account.
“With only the iPhone and its passcode, an interloper can within seconds change the password associated with the iPhone owner’s Apple ID,” said the report.
This would lock the victim out of their account, which includes anything stored in iCloud.
“The thief can also often loot the phone’s financial apps since the passcode can unlock access to all the device’s stored passwords,” it added.
When the password change is complete, the software offers an option to force other Apple devices, such as Macs or iPads, to sign out of the Apple account, so a victim couldn’t turn to those devices to regain access.
The Apple software never requires the user to enter an older password before setting a new one.
With the new password, the thief can disable Find My iPhone. Disabling Find My iPhone feature also allows the thief to resell the iPhone.
As Apple spokesperson said that iPhone is the most secure consumer mobile device, and “we work tirelessly every day to protect all our users from new and emerging threats”.
“We sympathise with users who have had this experience and we take all attacks on our users very seriously, no matter how rare,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Nearly all of the victims had their iPhones stolen while they were out at night socialising at public places, pubs and bars.
In all cases, the iPhone owners were locked out of their Apple accounts.
“They then discovered thousands of dollars in financial thefts, including some combination of Apple Pay charges, drained bank accounts linked to phone apps and money taken from PayPal’s Venmo and other money-sending apps,” the report elaborated.
The same flaw exists in Google’s Android smartphone operating system, but “higher resale value of iPhones makes them a far more common target”, according to law enforcement sources.
“Our sign-in and account-recovery policies try to strike a balance between allowing legitimate users to retain access to their accounts in real-world scenarios and keeping the bad actors out,” a Google spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Apple has made it possible to secure the Apple ID using hardware security keys, which are tiny USB dongles.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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