Not FUN: iPhone hijacking hack revealed

[Fer Echegaray]

If you receive a text message on your iPhone any time after Thursday afternoon containing only a single square character, Charlie Miller would suggest you turn the device off. Quickly.



That small cipher will likely be your only warning that someone has taken advantage of a bug that Miller and his fellow cybersecurity researcher Collin Mulliner plan to publicize Thursday at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. 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.



Full article:

 

[David Griffith 2]

:blink:

 

[EddieS'04]

I also read an article that some sort of hacking is causing cell tower failures...

 

[Dre L]

I also read an article that some sort of hacking is causing cell tower failures...

No, that was apple whining to the fed to pass a law to make iphone jailbreaks illegal. Their case was that an unlocked iphone makes it easier to hack so that a terrorist could break a cell tower with it, or a drug dealer could make anonymous phone calls.



When you think about it, the argument is pathetic. They're trying to save face and deal with having to be a grown up company after all these years of saying they were better.



There have been too many unsecure apple incidents coming to light lately, and their chickens are coming home to roost. This iphone thing comes on the heels of a warning by a security expert about how easily hackable iphones are.

Mac security researcher Dino Zovi has found a major flaw in OS X that allows hackers to steal users credit card numbers and more. States Mr. Zovi, "Writing exploits for [Microsoft] Vista is hard work. Writing exploits for Mac is a lot of fun."

Apple has made itself a target lately with all their security claims. There is actually more focus on hacking macs these days since it is so "hard".



They don't make great computers. They make great commercials, have great marketing, and package a nice computer with a halfway OS, that requires booting Windows to make it complete. After all these years, their great claim to fame is an mp3 player and a phone. Nice products, but flawed.



But when push comes to shove apple whines:

. . . two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey -- this is a true story -- saying, "Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices." They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I've ever taken in business. (Applause.)



I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, "Is this a joke? Who are you?" Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we're just going to keep running them and running them and running them.

 

[Dre L]

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[Kevin Lang]

Hacked, what?



According to the hippies at the Genius Bars, Macs are intuitive to use, have no problems, "don't get viruses", can't be hacked,and are God's Gift to computing.



(So then why does the Genius Bar always have heinously long lines at every Apple store? :wacko: )



Edit: Since Al Gore is on the Apple Board of Directors, can we call the latest iPhone hackings an inconvenient truth?

 

[A K]

If only the world fell over each and every announcement of Ballmer and Dell as they do Jobs. Apple leads the way, whereas the rest copy and paste. I've bounced from Mac to PC multiple times in my lifetime, and while both are easy to use--if you can't use a Mac, you ought to stay away from power tools and pinwheels--a Mac is sort of like a BMW Z3, whereas a PC like a Miata. Sure, they get you where you need to be. But, only one has that refined feel on the way there.

 

[Les]

Here is a site specifically for those that wish to hack their iPhones...

 

[Les]

And here is a story about a 17 year old that hacked an iPhone. So much for security...

 

[A K]

That story is two years old, Les.