Apple thanks security researchers for reporting the flaw

Aug 1, 2013 07:20 GMT  ·  By

Three computer whizzes recently discovered that they could hack any iPhone using a fake charger and some malicious code. Apple has patched the hole in the latest iOS beta, and even thanked the hackers for their efforts.

Demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, the flaw allows anyone with physical access to an iPhone 5 to compromise the handset using a specially built charger that has a tiny Linux computer inside.

The malware gets installed invisibly and the phone gets hacked in less than a minute, the researchers said.

Which makes it a fairly critical bug, but Apple has already taken steps to patch it. iOS 7 Beta 4 bears the first evidence of that, as shown in the screenshot above (courtesy of Patrick Gray, Risky.biz via Forbes).

Following the Black Hat demo, Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said, “We would like to thank the researchers for their valuable input.”