Critical IPhone SMS Vulnerability

Posted by DK

August 11, 2009

Apple is releasing a critical patch on Saturday to address a recent vulnerability that was demonstrated at the infamous Blackhat hacking conference.

Charlie Miller, a consultant with Independent Security Evaluators, and Collin Mulliner, a PhD student at the Technical University of Berlin, presented the details of the vulnerability at the Black Hat Security Conference in Las Vegas last week. The memory-overflow issue could allow a minor crash or remote exploitation by sending a malicious text message to the iPhone over the short message service (SMS) available on all phones.

This is the kind of vulnerability that can be turned into a worm and virus.

The patch will apparently be made available via ITunes.

Also, Google Android and Windows Mobile apparently also have similar problems. I’m still waiting for info on this.

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