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Former Member's avatar
Former Member
2 years ago

How to protect against compromised iPhone passcode

I am wondering about an unlikely scenario. Let's say I am forced to reveal my iPhone passcode and turnover my iPhone. The unlocked iPhone now has access to all my 1Password stored accounts, and my email accountss allowing the criminal(s) to access my entire life. Seems bad.

How would you mitigate against this threat? I thought about a hardware 2FA key, but I don't want to have to use that every time I need to login to a web site.

I could not store key passwords (e.g. financial accounts) in 1Password, but that sort of defeats the purpose of a password manager.

Anyone else concerned about this?

Thanks.


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  • Former Member's avatar
    Former Member

    Does anyone know whether a hardware key with apple 2FA prevents reseting Apple ID with just a trusted device?

  • If you don't set up autofill in the settings app, then you can close that hole in security, I think.

  • Rene123's avatar
    Rene123
    New Contributor

    This is a big vulnerability! They don't need to force you at all. Only observe you type in your passcode, and then steal your phone.

    With the basic phone passcode they can see all 1Password passwords, as they show up under iOS settings>Passwords!

    This defeats the vault password. If anyone knows how to prevent this, please let us know.

    See this article
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-iphone-security-theft-passcode-data-privacya-basic-iphone-feature-helps-criminals-steal-your-digital-life-cbf14b1a

  • I do think about this a lot but there’s not much to be done if you reveal your passcode. Security models generally exclude the scenario of unprotected device access. That said, 1Password will only unlock if given your biometric or the master password, both of which the attacker wouldn’t have with a stolen phone. Not much they can do with your email accounts except receive reset tokens - here is where a hardware key may come in handy but even then many accounts offer the ability to reset if you lose that key. One thing to recognize is that credit cards will often protect you from financial fraud in these situations so as long as you don’t keep a debit card on your phone, that should be remedied. Also you can use Screen Time to restrict access to account, passcode and mail account changes behind a different passcode - I do this. Given that 1Password is not accessible, my hope is that I can get to a computing device fast enough after the theft to deactivate email accounts on the iPhone after it is stolen.

    Outside of that, if you’re in a situation where you’re under threat to life, please go ahead and reveal your passcode. Most fraud of this kind can be remediated, and your life is more precious.