I wouldn’t say an insider is necessary for this to be possible. No software is perfect and there’s a big market for iPhone exploits and plenty of hackers trying to find them.
Hopefully this can be patched in iOS 17 or ideally sooner. Worst case is this uses some form of hardware flaw that can’t be patched.
The exploit would be on Apple’s backend servers rather than on device, with some jailbreaks you can bypass activation lock but your unable to use Apple services or even some functionality such as cellular. For an activation bypass there either needs to be a backend server exploit or an apple employee working with the service.
I can only vouch for Apple certified repair technicians but we need to have the customer provide proof of purchase such as a verified receipt and we can fast track the unlock process by sending it directly to the iCloud support department but we can’t unlock the device in our store and we can’t even take the device in for repair if the customer is unable to prove the device is their own(generally this is just unlocking the device or logging into their iCloud account and checking that the serials match but a original receipt also works)
I wouldn’t say an insider is necessary for this to be possible. No software is perfect and there’s a big market for iPhone exploits and plenty of hackers trying to find them.
Hopefully this can be patched in iOS 17 or ideally sooner. Worst case is this uses some form of hardware flaw that can’t be patched.
The exploit would be on Apple’s backend servers rather than on device, with some jailbreaks you can bypass activation lock but your unable to use Apple services or even some functionality such as cellular. For an activation bypass there either needs to be a backend server exploit or an apple employee working with the service.
I can only vouch for Apple certified repair technicians but we need to have the customer provide proof of purchase such as a verified receipt and we can fast track the unlock process by sending it directly to the iCloud support department but we can’t unlock the device in our store and we can’t even take the device in for repair if the customer is unable to prove the device is their own(generally this is just unlocking the device or logging into their iCloud account and checking that the serials match but a original receipt also works)