12-year-old finds iPhone flaw while texting girlfriend

By Elinor Mills on 08 October 2008, 10:31am

A 12-year-old boy who uses his iPhone mostly for texting with his girlfriend has discovered what looks like a new vulnerability with the device.

The unnamed boy, son of blogger Karl Kraft, turns on the passcode lock and disables SMS Preview in order to prevent his parents from seeing any messages, Kraft wrote on his blog.

Those settings block the display of incoming text messages and show an alert saying 'New Text Message' if a text comes through while the phone is locked. However, if the phone is set to emergency call mode the incoming text messages are previewed.

"Thus all I need to do to intercept the messages from his girlfriend is to place the phone in emergency mode and wait 30 seconds for the next sickly sweet message," Kraft writes.

Apple representatives did not return emails seeking comment.

A different security hole related to password-protected iPhones was discovered in August, and last month a researcher disclosed that the iPhone captures all the activities of a user in order to enable the cool fading applications effect. -Elinor Mills

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