SMS bug could leave every iPhone in the world vulnerable, say hackers

Posted Jul 30, 2009 at 3:47AM EST by Karl B.

Listed in: News Tags: Hackers, Las Vegas, remote control

iPhone - Image 1

A pair of hackers have reportedly spotted an iPhone bug that could completely expose the Apple device to remote control through a hack. Worst of all, it doesn't matter what hardware revision or OS version the iPhone has.

AppleInsider reports that Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner revealed at a recent Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas that a single unusual text character can confuse the phone and open it up for unscrupulous types to attack.

The only defense is to shut off the phone completely. The problem is that the vulnerability extends to messaging, so the hack could also be used to further propagate itself by sending out more messages of its own.

Another vulnerability could leave the iPhone open to what amounts to a mobile equivalent of a denial of service attack. Through a series of SMS messages, someone can keep the iPhone offline for 10 seconds at a time.

Both Miller and Mulliner said that they already notified Apple about the security flaw about a month ago, but the company hasn't issued a patch for either of the two issues yet. Neither have they made any announcements regarding the release of any such patch.

Via AppleInsider

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They've known about this for over a month and they haven't done anything, in the public eye, to remedy this issue so the hacker/s making it public. Did you READ the article?

If any one gets a txt message from an unknown caller that is just one symbol (like a square) turn your iphone off immediately. It says that in the article too.

# That last bit reminds me of Nintendo — Navani 2009-07-30 11:20

When Bushwacker or whomever contacted Nintendo about how people can play burned games on a Wii through an exploit and they didn't respond.. Then he released the letter publicly. Or something like that

# well... — valefour 2009-07-31 03:24

....that's why i'm a proud G1 owner. haha....

# .. — TheRockness 2009-07-31 06:04

The G2's looking nice.

# Fixed! — TheRockness 2009-07-31 08:53

http://www.redmondpie.com/download-iphone-os-3.0.1-firmware/

Just fire up iTunes and update. I'd say that's a pretty fast response.

# wholly fuc| — wolfey2424 2009-08-01 18:52

yeah.. but they didn't do a damn thing about it after a month? See, this is another reason I dislike apple.

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SMS bug could leave every iPhone in the world vulnerable, say hackers

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