One of the most infamous Internet events of 2014 might be doomed to repeat itself. Business Insider reports that a hacker known as Pr0x13 has released a tool called iDict on GitHub that is capable of bypassing restrictions and authentication on any iCloud account, potentially giving hackers unfettered access to iOS devices.
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According to Pr0x13, this “100% working iCloud Apple ID Dictionary attack” was possible thanks to a “painfully obvious” bug which would have been found by malicious hackers before long anyway.
Pr0x13 won’t take responsibility for how anyone decides to use the exploit, but wants everyone to know that his intentions were to alert Apple to the bug so that the company could patch it as soon as possible. Of course, the hacker also could have disclosed the information to Apple privately without putting all of our accounts at risk, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as dramatic.
If iDict is as effective (and as simple to use) as Pr0x13 claims, Apple needs to act fast to avoid another controversy like the celebrity photo scandal of 2014. It is widely agreed that Apple’s response to that disaster was both too slow and too soft. This could be the company’s chance to make up for lost time.
There doesn’t seem to have been any fallout from the release of the exploit so far, but Redditors and Twitter users are stating that iDict is working as intended. In other words — it’s only a matter of time.
