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General discussion

First ***** in the iPhone revealed ?

Jul 23, 2007 5:11AM PDT

July 23, 2007

The Price of Power: Hackers Hit the Phone

I've caught a lot of flak over the years from Apple fans for maintaining that the relative freedom of the Mac from hacker attackers was due in part to the fact that Windows was a more tempting target. The speed with which hackers have punched holes in the security of the iPhone suggest the Mac itself may be more vulnerable than it's ardent fans believe.

As reported by John Schwartz in today's New York Times (registration required), security firm Independent Security Evaluators has demonstrated an attack that lets a hostile Web page take full control of an iPhone and capture a user's personal data. Although there is no indication that the vulnerability is being exploited in the wild, computer scientist Steven M. Bellovin of Columbia University is quoted as saying "it looks like a very genuine hack." (You can watch a video demonstration of the attack here.)

Bellovin points out that this sort of attack is inevitable as operating systems on phones get more and more computer-like. The iPhone runs a version of Mac's OS X operating system, though Apple has been extremely stingy with details on just which pieces of OS X are included. It's not clear whether the iPhone attack, which exploits a vulnerability in the Safari browser, might also work against Macs.


I'm no security expert by any means. The security holes I always read about always seem to be in the software that interface with content on the web. The real problems in windows is that it allows these threats to get into the OS via executable files. As I understand, since OS X does not use this scheme then the mac user basically has to be tricked into installing malware onto their computer. Whether this is the same case with an iPhone I don't know... but... if an iPhone can be hacked to accept malware without the user being socially engineered into installing the stuff, then an unwary iPhone owner could possibly infect their mac when/if they interface the phone with the computer. Correct?

Is the operating system on an iPhone similar enough to a mac that this may be the beginning of a ***** in the OS X armor?

Discussion is locked

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(NT) LOL... ***** is a bad word? How about "crack" then?
Jul 23, 2007 5:13AM PDT
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Barry beat you to it.
Jul 23, 2007 5:25AM PDT
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(NT) Curses! I was Hacked !!!
Jul 23, 2007 9:53AM PDT