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Critical iPhone Bugs To Be Publicized Today At Black Hat Conference

Submitted by Edward Kirk on July 30, 2009 - 2:38pm.
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If you receive a text message in the near future containing nothing but a square character, Collin Mulliner and Charlie Miller suggest immediately turning off your iPhone, as this is the only clue you will get that someone has exploited the bug that could take over your iPhone completely. At today's Black Hat cybersecurity conference, they plan to publicize this bug, which, when exploited properly, can be used to gain control of all functions of someone's iPhone without their consent or even knowledge.

This includes dialing the phone, surfing websites, activating the camera and microphone on the device, and, most importantly, sending the same SMSs to other devices to bring them under control as well.

"This is serious. The only thing you can do to prevent it is turn off your phone," Miller told Forbes. "Someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this."

Both Milliner and Miller say they have notified Apple of the bug (as is customary), but Apple has yet to release a patch for the flaw, so your iPhone is still at risk of being affected.

If that's not scary enough, this terrible bug is just one of the many that they plan to reveal at their talk. Another bug, which also affects Google Android handsets, would allow someone to send a series of SMS messages that would knock the device off of a cell network for 10 seconds at a time. If repeated, it could potentially keep them off of the network.

Miller and Mulliner first announced in mid-June that they would be speaking about the flaw at the conference.

[via Forbes]

What to do?

Submitted by SuperDuty on July 30, 2009 - 2:59pm.
So, after you turn off the phone, what do you do next? If you turn it back on, will the hacker be connected again? Can you delete the text and be free of it?

Coping with the news

Submitted by halfrican on July 30, 2009 - 4:08pm.
I have turned my my iPhones Airplane mode to on and then turned the WiFi connection to on. This way My Phone is functional in some aspects but will be unable to send receive SMS's.

BTW - I have Google Voice active and I have been using the GV Mobile App to send Texts. I feel sorry for those who didn't jump on Google Voice!

Question - WHEN CAN WE TURN OUR IPHONES ON WITHOUT WORRRY?????

Submitted by Stephen007 on July 30, 2009 - 7:30pm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by halfrican View Post
Question - WHEN CAN WE TURN OUR IPHONES ON WITHOUT WORRRY?????
You are way overreacting. These black hat exploits are common. That's why they have a conference. New exploits are discovered all the time. Heck, that exploit that allowed us to jailbreak via a website (way back when) was just an exploit, but in that case used for good rather than evil.

There are bad exploits available for most platforms, with Windows being the most commonly targetted. New ones come out all the time. Removing yourself from the AT&T network does make you safe but also emasculates your phone. Might as well have an iPod Touch then.

feel sorry?

Submitted by madscientest on July 31, 2009 - 10:46am.
Quote:
Originally Posted by halfrican View Post
I have turned my my iPhones Airplane mode to on and then turned the WiFi connection to on. This way My Phone is functional in some aspects but will be unable to send receive SMS's.

BTW - I have Google Voice active and I have been using the GV Mobile App to send Texts. I feel sorry for those who didn't jump on Google Voice!

Question - WHEN CAN WE TURN OUR IPHONES ON WITHOUT WORRRY?????
your the lazy one who cant dial a number... are your fingers that sore that you now cant type...