Security researchers have discovered that the January 1st, 1970 bug can be used to remote brick iPhones and iPads. Patrick Kelley and Matt Harrigan managed to automate the exploitation of the date bug that bricked many iPhones back in February, armed with only $120 of electronics, a basic understanding of networking, and a familiarity with the way Apple devices connect to wireless networks.
Using a custom Raspberry Pi setup built by Kelley, a wifi access point resembling a commonly trusted network spoofs Apple’s NTP servers to pass the 1/1/1970 date to the device. This starts a chain reaction of software instability resulting in a observed temperatures up to 54°C… which is hot enough to brick a device.
This issue has been fixed with the release of iOS 9.3.1.
