The skinny on the iPhone vulnerability (Updated)

07.31.09 | No Comments | by: Dave Jeyes

 iphone

There’s a lot of buzz going on surrounding a security ‘vulnerability’ that two researchers have ‘discovered’ in the iPhone. A lot of this is to drum up hype leading up to the Black Hat security conference, but here are the details behind it.

The researchers broke into an iPhone using control SMS messages. These messages allow AT&T to remotely control features on your phone. If your provider is T-Mobile or AT&T, your phone likely has the same ‘feature’ these guys are calling a ‘vulnerability.’

So what’s the real risk here?

The iPhone was chosen as a target because of its massive popularity. One of the features of these control messages is access to your address list. That means a hacker could, potentially, write an iPhone virus that sends malicious text messages to your entire address list.

Carriers haven’t traditionally been concerned with cell phone virus control. Historically people have had a wide variety of phones, so a virus doesn’t have much potential to spread. With iPhone’s becoming so common, this could change.

So what should you do? About the only practical advice I’ve seen during this whole online firestorm is that if you get a text with a single square character, turn off your phone.

As of yet, there aren’t any reports of an iPhone virus circulating. So for the time being you probably don’t need to worry so much about an iPhone apocalypse.

UPDATE: Apple has released a new OS 3.0.1 for the iPhone that patches this vulnerability. That was quick!

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