The password protection of an iPad 2 running iOS 5 can be circumvented in less than five seconds with just three simple steps.

Bypassing the unlock screen on iPad 2 can be accomplished by first pressing the power button until the power-off screen is displayed. Users then need only to close and reopen the fondleslab’s ‘smart cover’ before, finally, pressing the cancel button to unlock the device.

After dodging the password protection, you can access the foreground application running at the time the device was locked, potentially exposing corporate email in the process. You can’t use the home button, so access is limited to foreground applications. As enterprise IT blog BringYourOwnIT.com notes, one obvious workaround would be to instruct users to close any foreground application before locking their iPad.

Below is a video posted by BringYourOwnIT.com illustrating the easy unlock process.

The security weakness comes days after it emerged that locked iPhone 4S could be accessed using Siri, the voice-activated personal assistant built into the device. There’s an easy way for security-conscious users to disable Siri when their phone is locked but this option isn’t applied by default, net security firm Sophos reports.

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