New iOS 7 bug lets you make non-emergency calls from the lock screen

Forbes reported late Friday that a new bug has been discovered in devices running iOS 7. This time, the bug lets a person with physical access to a phone to place any kind of call from the “Emergency Call” screen—even to international numbers and premium numbers (like adult chat lines and tech support numbers).

To produce the bug, simply type any number into the Emergency Call screen, then rapidly tap the Call button until the phone brings up an empty screen with an Apple logo. At that point, the phone is making the call to the number requested.

Just one day after the release of iOS 7 this week, a first bug was discovered—also in the lock screen—that allowed someone to access photos on the phone from the new Control Center feature. From there, an attacker could open the Share menu in the Photos app to view all the contacts stored on the phone and could send out pictures via the Messages app or to any e-mail addresses or social media accounts that were linked to the app. Still, users could disable the Control Center feature to protect themselves from such an attack until Apple issued a fix.

But for the latest bug, discovered by Karam Daoud, a 27-year old Palestinian living in the West Bank city of Ramallah, there is no way for users to protect themselves (short of simply keeping the phone close and discontinuing service on it if it gets stolen or lost). And with the two bugs out in the wild, there's the possibility that a potential attacker could use the earlier bug to view a person's contacts (provided that person hasn't disabled Control Center on their phone) and then use the second bug to call a contact on that person's phone.

Daoud said he reported the bug to Apple, and the company told him that it would issue a fix in its next round of updates. Daoud also said that the bug worked on all devices that ran iOS 7, and Forbes reporter Andy Greenberg was able to reproduce the bug on two different carriers (although he did not specify which two).

Ars senior products specialist Andrew Cunningham was also able to reproduce the call bug on an iPhone 5S using the steps shown in the video above. “You really have to slam on that call button, though,” he reported. “I had to use two fingers to tap it fast enough to make it crash.”