Russian Company Sells iOS Cracking Software

A proper passcode will make your iOS device much harder to hack

If you trust Russian security company Elcomsoft with your credit card details, you can buy a piece of software which will let you crack the encryption on an iOS device and gain access to the juicy information contain within.

The ?79 software is called Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker, and works with both iOS and blackberry devices. What it does is to crack open the iPhone backup you have on your computer and then harvest SMS data, call logs, you address book, photos, e-mail settings, browsing history and web cache, and more.

What?s more, there?s a pro edition available only to law enforcement agencies (?199) which will allow hackers (sorry. ?researchers?) to make a complete dump of the iPhone?s data and from there access passwords and encryption keys.

Don?t worry too much, though. If you leave your phone in a cab, this won?t affect you. Hackers will need both a copy of your encrypted backup and physical access to your phone. The phone is needed for some essential information such as the device?s UDID number.

Once this information has been gathered together, the app goes to work, using your computer?s GPU to make its brute-force attack on your password a lot faster. As most people use only a 4-digit passcode to lock their phone, there aren?t to many combinations to try anyway.

And if you don?t encrypt your backups, or you don?t have a passcode on your phone, you?re pretty much screwed anyway.

Given the amount of sensitive information on a smartphone, it?s worth making sure you?re covered. I keep my backups unencrypted, as I figure that if someone has gotten access to my computer I have bigger things to worry about. But I do have a proper, long password on my iPad. You can do this in the Setting app. Go to General > Passcode Lock and switch ?Simple Passcode? off. Also make sure that ?Require Password? is on.

Now, you can enter a password with the full range of letters, numbers and symbols on the QWERTY keyboard. Sure, it may take a few seconds longer to unlock your phone, but it?s worth it.

Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker [Elcomsoft via Ars Technica]

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Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/05/russian-company-sells-ios-cracking-software/

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