Tech | July 31, 2009 | 27 comments

iPhone can be hacked and taken over by a single malicious text message

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/30/iphone-text-message-hacking-vulnerability

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A "serious memory corruption bug" in the iPhone can make it vulnerable to being taken over by a single specially-crafted text message, security researchers showed today.

So if you get a text message that consists of a square on your iPhone - perhaps you should worry. Or, much more likely, it's a prank from a friend trying to freak you out.

The Black Hat conference in Las Vegas saw a demonstration by Collin Mulliner and Charlie Miller, who are independent security experts, who proved the weakness by taking control of an iPhone belonging to CNet's Elinor Mills.

Mills described it thus:

While I was talking on the phone to Charlie Miller, his partner, Collin Mulliner, sent me a text message from his phone. One minute I'm talking to Miller and the next minute my phone is dead, and this time it's not AT&T's fault. After a few seconds it came back to life, but I was not able to make or receive calls until I rebooted.

The researchers told Mills that "an attacker could exploit the hole to make calls, steal data, send text messages, and do basically anything that I can do with my iPhone".

How many iPhones are vulnerable? All of them. How many will be affected? Ah, that's a lot harder. Not the majority. Not even a large minority. It depends on whether Apple can fix the problem before the malicious hackers out there figure out how the hack is done.
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27 comments // iPhone can be hacked and taken over by a single malicious text message

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