iPhone SMS Vulnerability Identified; Apple Working On A Fix
by Dave Clarke
July 2, 2009
Mac OS X security guru Charlie Miller has discovered a gaping security hole in the SMS application in the iPhone OS 3.0., According to Engadget Mobile. As Mr. Miller puts it, the vulnerability allows hackers to:
"run software code on the phone sent by SMS over a mobile operator's network in order to monitor the location of the phone using GPS, turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a distributed denial of service attack or a botnet."Clearly this is a problem for everyone who uses SMS and in the interest of not allowing any real world attacks using this security hole to be deployed, Mr. Miller didn't disclose the methods or tools needed to successfully breach the privacy of victims. More than likely Apple will be including a fix for this in it's upcoming release of iPhone OS 3.1 which recently was made available in beta form to developers.