Threat to Apple's iPhone Security

I would not be wrong If I say that iPhone is the market leader in mobile phone industry, you must know about PC hacking and mobile hacking, though most of the people dont know much about the mobile hacking. Well today I would tell you about the story of Charlie Miller (the man who hacked the MacBook Air in two minutes) and now he and his partner-in-crime, Collin Mulliner, plan to unveil an exploit at this Thursday's Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. Apparently, it would let a hacker take complete control of the iPhone with nothing more than a simple text message.

They are taking advantage of a flaw in how the handset handles text messages, Miller and Mulliner are able to dial the phone, visit Web sites, turn on the phone's camera and microphone, and, most importantly, send text messages that can hijack other phones. Miller told Forbes, about the precautions of mobile hacking that "The only thing you can do to prevent it is turn off your phone."

This is not only the iPhone flaw the pair plan to disclose at the conference. Another hole in the SMS system (which also effects Android handsets) can knock the phone off a cellular network for about 10 seconds.

Miller and Mulliner told the respective companies about the exploits over a month ago, and while Google was quick to patch the hole, Apple has yet to fortify the vulnerability. "I've given them more time to patch this than I've ever given a company to patch a bug," Miller explained to Forbes.

The comments (Warning: PDF) were filed in response to a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to legalize the jailbreaking of iPhones to allow consumers to run non-Apple-approved software -- which is now a necessity for all those Google Voice fans with iPhones.

While the rest of the world has been freaking out and forcing Microsoft to launch a "browser ballot" when installing Windows (instead of loading Internet Explorer by default), Apple has been quietly embracing its more draconian impulses and making more and more enemies along the way.

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