iOS 7 Lock Screen Bug Discovered Yet Again in Latest Update

Last week, Apple sent out a small update to iOS 7 that fixed a lock screen bug that allowed anyone with your phone to access certain regions of your device, such as your camera roll, as well as the ability to share photos to social media sites. However, iOS 7.0.2 hasn’t completely closed up all of the exploits; it turns out that another lock screen bug was discovered.

The lock screen bypass works by utilizing Siri, so to get it working, you start off my initiating a phone call using Siri from the lock screen, then select FaceTime. When FaceTime pops up, put the phone to sleep, then turn on your phone and swipe to unlock. Answer and end the FaceTime call at the other end. Then click the Add Caller button (+) and cancel it right away, as well as end the call. After a while you should be in the Phone app.

This lock screen exploit only gives prying eyes to the Phone app, so it can’t do as much as damage as the previous lock screen bug, but this still gives people unauthorized access to your contacts, as well as all of your outgoing and incoming phone calls that you made. This bypass method also requires another phone or a computer that has FaceTime abilities, so it’s bit limited as far as getting it to work.

Since the exploit relies on Siri to get it started, you can simply disable Siri from working on the lock screen if you’re worried about someone trying this on your phone; just open up the Settings app and navigate to General > Passcode & Fingerprint and turn off Siri under the section titled Allow Access When Locked. This means that, in order to use Siri, you’ll have to unlock your iPhone first.

The previous lock screen exploit allowed users to access the device’s Camera Roll and view all of an iPhone user’s photos that they have stored inside, as well as share those photos to various social networks or even through email, which could be a bit disastrous when put into the wrong hands, especially revengeful hands.

Luckily, this new lock screen bug isn’t as bad, but it still gives curious eyes the ability to view your contacts and see all of your incoming and outgoing calls that you’ve made, including who you called and what time you called them — not especially private, but not something that everyone wants to keep public either.