If you've got a passcode entry set on your iPhone, you might think it could block nefarious or mischievous people from accessing any part of your iPhone. Not so. We've been made aware of a security flaw in iOS 4.1 that allows users to bypass the passcode entry screen and gain direct access to the iPhone's Phone app. It's not just hype either: this is easier to pull off than the Konami code.
How it works: when the passcode entry screen comes up, tap "Emergency Call." Input any number you like, then tap "Call" and click the iPhone's sleep switch in quick succession (to get this to work, I had to perform the two actions almost simultaneously). If you've done the "trick" properly, you should now have full access to the iPhone's Phone app, including contacts, keypad, and calling history. What's more: tapping "Share Contact" and the camera icon will give you access to the Photos app. That's the extent of your access -- hitting the home button doesn't do anything at all -- but it's bad enough.
According to Daring Fireball's John Gruber, this bug isn't reproducible on the latest iOS 4.2 beta, so it's possible Apple was already aware of the security bug and has fixed it in 4.2. Until 4.2 is released, the best thing you can do is take our own Dave Caolo's advice: physical access is total access, so the first and most vital step to making sure people can't access your sensitive information is making sure they can't access your iPhone at all.
I hate it when someone SMSes me, and I miss the vibration, and I go for hours without checking my phone. Thus I created SMSNotify, a script that vibrates your iPhone every 15 seconds when you have an unread SMS. The script is quite simple - it just queries the SMS database for unread SMSes, and if there are any, it calls the 'vibrator' utility that vibrates the phone for a short time.
It's written in shell script so if you want it to do other things it's easy to modify.
Now it's not perfect - when your phone is asleep it won't be every 15 seconds but will wait until the phone silently wakes up (to check your e-mail generally) before it can vibrate again. I'm working on that.
Download it at http://devices.natetrue.com/iphone/smsnotify.zip or just wait for it to appear in Installer.app - my good friend Shaun Erickson is packaging it up. Note that if you manually install it you need to start it by running "launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/net.ations.cre.smsnotify.plist" but if you use Installer that will be done automatically.
Happy texting. Return to Nate True's blog
