SMS Vulnerability for iPhone To Be Revealed.

Jul 30 2009, 12:20pm CDT | by Robert Evans

Today, at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, cybersecurity researchers will reveal a crucial vulnerability in the iPhone. This SMS-related weakness could apparently allow hackers to gain control of any iPhone in the world. This may all sound like fear-mongering right now, but Forbes describes the vulnerability as a potentially crippling issue;

“Using a flaw they've found in the iPhone's handling of text messages, the researchers say they'll demonstrate how to send a series of mostly invisible SMS bursts that can give a hacker complete power over any of the smart phone's functions. That includes dialing the phone, visiting Web sites, turning on the device's camera and microphone and, most importantly, sending more text messages to further propagate a mass-gadget hijacking.”

If these researchers are accurate, this could be a problem that becomes exponentially worse with each hijacked iPhone. Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner, the two men who found the SMS weakness, reportedly warned Apple about it more than a month ago. For whatever reason, the Cupertino-based company has not issued a patch to fix the alleged issue.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. After the release of the first iPhone, Collin Mulliner discovered a major vulnerability in it as well. Apple released a patch to fix that issue, but they've been silent on this one. That could mean that they disagree with the severity of the security weakness, or it could mean they just haven't yet figured out how to fix it.

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Robert Evans
The excitement about new smartphones, tablets and anything mobile drive Robert to unearth the latest rumors and developments in this fast moving space. He adopted 4G as soon as it become available and knows where the mobile market is going.
Robert can be contacted directly at robert@i4u.com.