Security Experts Warn that New Hacking Programs Threaten Your iPhone Password

Updated Apr 24,2018 | by Niko

According to reports, a new program has been invented by a secretive international firm, and it is considered as a hacking type program and can break through iPhone password within just minutes.

Security experts in the industry warn that Apple users are now at risk of being hacking, and it would be better to change their iPhone passwords to protect themselves from any possible attacks.  

A product named as “GrayKey” is mentioned. It is a portable device, which can break into iPhone devices within minutes, including the latest iPhone 8 series and iPhone X. This product has two offer options: an online version that is billed at $15,000 and can be used 300 times; an unlimited offline version is billed at $30,000.

Actually, GrayKey is the flagship product of Grayshift, a private and highly secretive company based in Atlanta and was started by an ex-Apple security engineer and long-time US intelligence agency contractors in 2016.

Although the vulnerabilities that GrayKey targets to access iPhone are not revealed, security experts speculate that the hacking program most likely uses trail and error method – brute-force to decode iPhone’s encrypted data.

“GrayKey is a gray box, four inches wide by four inches deep by two inches tall, with two lightning cables sticking out of the front,” Thomas Reed, Malwarebytes’s director said something about GrayKey in his blog.

“Two iPhones can be connected at one time, and are connected for about two minutes. After that, they are disconnected from the device, but are not yet cracked. Some time later, the phones will display a black screen with the passcode, among other information.”

Once iPhone devices are unlocked, all the contents and data on the iPhone will be downloaded onto the GrayKey device and could be accessed online.

iPhone with 4-digit passcode is very easy to be unlocked, while the more digits a passcode had the longer it took to crack. Grayshift documents show that it can take up to three days or longer for six-digit passcode, and those disabled iPhone devices can also be unlocked.

Apple users are worried about the implications of such a device for their personal data.

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