That four-digit passcode you have installed on your iPhone might slow snoops down, but it won't stop them. Forbes is reporting that in some cases, it takes less than two minutes to crack the code.
Micro Systemation is a Swedish company that sells software capable of skirting privacy controls on iOS and Android gadgets. Law enforcement and military agencies use this software in order to access data on devices used by criminal suspects.
In a video (see below) Micro Systemation is able to hack an iPhone in just seconds. Granted, the password wasn't very complicated – it was "0000."
Forbes explains that the hack is possible through a Micro Systemation application called XRY, which deciphers the phone's password, siphons its data to a computer, and decrypts it in order to gain data like GPS logs, call history, contacts, text messages, keystrokes, and so forth. XRY works a lot like a jailbreak, Forbes said. The Micro Systemation team doesn't look for backdoor vulnerabilities made by the phone's manufacturer, but rather weaknesses in the software.
"Every week a new phone comes out with a different operating system and we have to reverse engineer them," Micro Systemation's marketing director Mike Dickinson told Forbes. "We're constantly chasing the market."
Dickinson told Forbes that his company sells products that are able to breach iPhone and Android security in 60 countries. It provides software to 98 percent of the U.K.'s police departments and also sells to U.S. police departments and the FBI. However, its largest client is the U.S. military, Forbes said.
As the smartphone business grows worldwide, so does Micro Systemation's business.
"It's a massive boom industry, the growth in evidence from mobile phones," Dickinson said. "After twenty years or so, people understand they shouldn't do naughty things on their personal computers, but they still don't understand that about phones. From an evidential point of view, it's of tremendous value… if they've done something wrong."
For more, see How to Make Insanely Secure Passwords, as well as Clean Up Your Passwords and A Guide to Creating Strong Passwords.