Despite being essential to protect your personal data, the security measures implemented by smartphone manufacturers to protect it from cyber-criminals can work against you. That’s the case wìth Apple and the Auto-Lock feature that automatically locks your device after six failed passcode attempts.

There are multiple reasons why that could occur. For example, your little one starts playing with your phone, you suffer a temporary memory lapse, or pay the consequences of a party that went a bit out of hand… Whatever the reason, a situation like that can have some serious consequences if you don’t take the appropriate precautionary measures.

A feature designed to prevent strangers from accessing your device in the event of loss or theft can cause you, the phone’s owner, to lose all of your photos, videos, music, and contacts.  The solution? A backup which, if you haven’t already, you should definitely make now.

iPhones usually provide two options to make backups: iTunes (which saves backups to your computer) and iCloud (which saves them to Apple’s cloud). If you choose the first option, you can do two things: connect your smartphone to your computer via a USB port, or via Wi-Fi if both devices belong to the same network. You can check Apple’s website for detailed instructions.

If you choose iCloud, there is no need for both devices to be on the same network or connected via a cable: you can make the backup from any place, any time. Additionally, you can configure your account to make daily backups automatically. Another advantage is that cloud backups are encrypted by default, an option you can also enable in iTunes.

Whatever mechanism you choose to back up your iPhone, a recent backup can save your life if your device gets locked after six wrong codes are entered.

If that ever happens to you, the only solution is to wipe the content of the locked device and retrieve it from a backup. There is no way to reset the passcode. No shortcuts. You will have to wipe the entire iPhone and start it from the backup copy (if you have one), or, in the worst case scenario, from scratch. The entire process is explained on the website of the company with the half eaten apple logo.

However, there is yet another, more extreme scenario. If you have complete faith in your memory, there are no kids around and you think that the only reason to have a wrong code entered on your smartphone is that it gets stolen, you can choose to erase your device automatically (without locking it) after ten failed passcode attempts. In that case, keeping an up-to-date backup copy is even more necessary.

A good example of all this is what has happened with the iPhone of one of the perpetrators of the recent San Bernardino (California) shooting after being arrested by the police. As you may already know, the FBI has asked Apple to make a special version of iOS that doesn’t lock the device after six failed passcode attempts or wipes it after ten attempts. That would allow the FBI to brute-force attack the criminal’s phone to break into it without fear of turning it into a paperweight.

That is precisely what happened with the iPhone of another criminal that ended up in the hands of a not-so-skilled member of the Massachusetts Police Department. When trying to access the phone in search of evidence, the agent entered ten wrong passcodes, setting the device back to its factory defaults. Goodbye to any possible evidence…

So be careful. If you ignore our advice and don’t make backup copies regularly, the same could happen to you. Are you really willing to run that risk?

The post How to prevent your iPhone content from being lost if you forget your password appeared first on MediaCenter Panda Security.

Thanks to their inbuilt sensors, bracelets and other wearables have become the perfect tool for monitoring our fitness and wellbeing – they inform us of our sporting progression and of how many calories we are burning at the gym. However, the growth in sales of these devices has also lead to a growth in the number of experts that warn of the risks that come associated with them in terms of data security.

The latest ones to raise concerns is a group of investigators at the IEEE Center for Secure Design in the United States, which has recently released a report about some of these threats.

The main risks, according to these experts, are based on the development of the device: those designed with less precision and care don’t usually include the necessary security specifications to protect the data that they collect. Their popularity, combined with the large quantity of information that they store, has made them a prime target for cybercriminals.

For the analysis, they have focused on the bracelets made for physical activity that measure variables such as vital signs. They also come with movement sensors such as accelerometers and they connect to the Internet to send the data to a centralized server.

The investigators claim that the attacks are directed at the software systems that control the flow of information between the device and the server. The same happens with other types of connected devices, such as smartphones or computers, which means that these vulnerabilities are taken advantage of quite often.

One of the methods that the criminals can use to access the user information is with an SQL injection. This technique means taking advantage of a security lapse to insert a malicious code in one of the IT applications that controls the database server.

Other known options are phishing and a technique which transmits unauthorized orders to a server, such as an information request. There is also the flooding of the buffer or the excess of data in an area of the hard drive, which would allow for the program that manages the storage to be modified.

Also, cybercriminals can carry out denial of service attacks via a fraudulent firmware update. The action leaves the device unusable, without battery, and blocks users from their accounts. It could also, therefore, affect other elements associated with the wearable, such as a telephone or computer.

The report highlights health data as delicate information that could be falsified or stolen by cybercriminals. Its authors affirm that more security measures are needed to guarantee that this information isn’t shared with other parties, even if the user publishes this information on social media.

The vulnerabilities of trackers could allow a cybercriminal to not only access the data of its owner, but also to launch attacks on a website and server of others.

With all of these risks in mind, the experts advise that, more than focusing on patching up the holes and vulnerabilities, it is necessary that we review the design process of wearables and analyze the whole ecosystem of software that surrounds them – from computers, to smartphones, and even data servers.

The post Knowing how many calories you’ve consumed is great, but be careful with fitness bracelets appeared first on MediaCenter Panda Security.