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Strange passcode dialog: feature or malware?

Someone showed me a strange dialog box that came up in the Mail app on iOS 7, with no mail message yet open. The dialog was titled "Passcode Requirement" and read "You must change your passcode within 60 minutes" and offered the choices "Later" and "Continue". I found no hint of such a requirement in the iPhone manual for iOS 7 (http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/iphone_user_guide.pdf) and more stangely, not a single hit on a Google search using the text of the message. As a result, she was concerned about this dialog, and was able to dismiss it by clicking the Home button.


Does anyone know whether this dialog is a feature or malware?

Posted on Sep 28, 2013 7:13 PM

Reply
71 replies

Sep 28, 2013 7:43 PM in response to shldr2thewheel

No, it's not jailbroken.


BTW, I should have added the third possibility of this being a bug.


She has a screenshot of the message above, so we may be able to get some input from people at an Apple Store.


Also, I was impressed to see that Google indexes Apple Discussion threads within minutes, so posting a dialog message makes the message able to be found by others instantly.

Jan 15, 2014 3:07 PM in response to segalsegal

I had this come up today. In changing my passcode, I was required to go from 4 to 6 or more characters, which was a change just announced by our corporate IT, so I'm suspecting those seeing this message are getting it due to policies being implemented that way, in my case through the Maas360 app the IT folks installed to sandbox my personal phone.


Hope this helps.

Jan 15, 2014 3:17 PM in response to bhrabin

Thanks for your reply. Sorry if I sound dumb here, I'm not overly phone savvy. In layman terms are you saying you employer is tracking what you do etc on your iPhone?


Sorry if I have misunderstood your message, I am curious as some of us recently discovered a clause in our contract of employment that meant our employer had permission to check our phone history should they wish for security purposes etc. Am wondering if this is the same thing. Thanks for your reply though.

Mar 4, 2014 3:07 PM in response to bhrabin

My iPhone 4 running OS7.0.4 NOT jailbroken, it has just popped up with the same strange message and this is a personal phone not linked to any corporate email account or mobile device management solution and not using and profiles. I work in IT security and it's either a weird bug or a very clever and nasty bit of malware.

Anyone else seeing this on a personal phone that is not linked to any corporate email service or MDM/policy service, not using profiles and not jail broken?

Strange passcode dialog: feature or malware?

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