A Cambridge-based computer scientist has successfully hacked an iPhone by cloning the smartphone's memory. The good news is that just a few cheap components can be used to build a bypass rig for unlocking iPhones.

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The computer scientist proved that an iPhone's passcode is not as safe as the FBI claimed earlier this year. The new research has been published as a short paper from the University of Cambridge.

Security researcher Sergei Skorobogatov pulled the hack off by unsoldering a NAND Flash chip, the device's main memory chip, and storage element. He then built an external chipboard to bypass the iPhone passcode system. He spoofed the passcode retry counter by first figuring out how the NAND chip communicated with the rest of the phone's hardware and then cloned the NAND chip.

Putting in a lot of time and patience, Skorobogatov cleared a bit of desk space and reset pin access attempts every time a cloned NAND replaced the previous one used giving him an unlimited number of attempts to guess a passcode

With this piece of apparatus, skorobogatov could effectively access a person's personals and take control of iPhones security system.

"This was achieved by unsoldering the NAND Flash chip of a sample phone in order to physically access its connection to the SoC, and partially reverse engineering its proprietary bus protocol," Skorobogatov revealed

You can see the hack in action in the video below: 

"The process does not require any expensive and sophisticated equipment. All needed parts are low cost and were obtained from local electronics distributors", Dr. Skorobogatov, who spent four months building a testing rig, wrote.