Think That iPhone Isn't A Corporate Security Risk?

If so, you had better think again. Researchers have shown how the passwords on the iPhone can be revealed in less than six minutes.Security managers and CIOs alike have enough to worry about when it comes to securing mobile devices. They certainly didn't need to learn that many of the passwords stored on an iPhone can be had in about half the time it takes to hard boil an egg.

But that's exactly what researchers in Germany just disclosed, and it's raising eyebrows. The cracking technique requires attackers have physical access to the device. Considering how many mobile devices are lost every year, that's not much consolation in this case.

These researchers conducted their attack against an iPhone 4 (not jailbroken) equipped with the most recent firmware. iPads are susceptible, too. Researchers said. The passwords recovered are those used for wifi networks, some applications (depending on how they were programmed) as well as the password credentials to e-mail and VPNs.

Here's a video demonstration:

The tools and techniques needed to conduct the necessary jailbreak and file access are widely available. What this team did was figure out how to extract the actual passwords.

The researchers' full paper, Lost iPhone? Lost Passwords! Practical Consideration of iOS Device Encryption Security is available here in .pdf format.

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