Remember that
alleged SMS-based security hole on the iPhone allowing evil-doers to execute arbitrary code and do all sorts of nasty crap like create an army of mobile zombies ready and willing to execute a DoS attack? The guy who found it, security expert Charlie Miller, said that he'd reveal the details of it at Black Hat -- and Black Hat's this week. Sure enough, Miller and his cohorts plan to unleash details of the hack today, and while they claim they informed Apple of the problem over a month ago, Cupertino's yet to make a move. We'd stop short of suggesting iPhone owners all turn off their handsets and take themselves firmly off the grid and into a completely disconnected underground bunker the moment the attack becomes public, but if it's as serious as Miller claims, it definitely bumps up the pressure on Apple to get a fix out on the double -- preferably before
3.1 drops.
posted Jul 30th 2009 3:29AM
Private bunker vacancy here!
I look forward to finding out how long the hacker has to physically steal my phone to "enable" this "vulnerability."
@Michael
Maybe if you acutally read about the attack you would know the attacker doesn't have to. Get a friggen clue n00b
Holy Sh*t, did i just up-rank PAC man?
@ProfessorKaos
I'm guessing Michael's smugness is due to the fact that he has SMS disabled, rendering this exploit ineffective on his iphone.
And yes you can disable SMS messages, you just need to call your provider and they can do that for you.
wts faraday cage
A Faraday cage wont stop RF. Its good for protection from electrostatic charge and high voltages but radio will pass right through.
To stop RF it takes quite a bit of engineering. Rooms for RF testing that block out all external RF are quite a piece of work.
No an anechoic chamber used for testing RF does have a faraday cage to stop external RF. Of course it does also have a load of absorping (spelling?) inside but faraday cages wired to ground is an easy way to reduce if not stop radio. The radio waves induce a current in the metal will in turn creates an oposing electro-magnetic fireld which reduces the intensity of the radio transmission.
6 inches of lead works pretty good too.
A Faraday cage does indeed block RF. Commercial RF-free rooms are hard to engineer only because of leakage points, such as the door, cable conduits and so forth. You don't even need solid metal, just a mesh finer than the smallest wavelength to block. Only evanescent waves that don't propagate will pass through the pores, and only a short distance before fading out exponentially.
I'm surprised Apple hasn't had it pulled yet like Boston MTA did with Defcon
Agreed. As much as I'm a fan of Defcon, there really isn't anything anyone can do about this now who is an end user. It seems more malicious than the spirit of the event and greyhattery in its glory to just shrug and release it.
I'm considering going without the phone tomorrow. If they release this with POC code and show it to everyone, they're just being dicks. Oh, and you too apple. Where's our friggin patch!?
"Oh, and you too apple. Where's our friggin patch!?"
They are too busy trying to fight the terrorists.
Apple can't be bothered with pressing security issues, not when they have to worry about keeping the Pre from syncing with iTunes.
+1
Exactly. Besides, no matter what they do it will still look like an iPhone so most users will still be happy. :D
I think they're also declining decent apps whilst letting iFart2009 plus edition into the App store.
I might be taking my Iphone off the grid tomorrow when I'm at work. The only way that the Iphone will get patch is if Steve Jobs gets attack by the code.
I think Apple is turning into an asshole. No patch for a major SMS hole, spewing out BS about how jailbreaking should not be allowed because it could be programmer to attack cell towers, being controlling and restrictive about the App Store, and failing to provide support to some major problems with their Macbooks. Using Apple's logic about how a jailbroken iPhone/ipod touch can have their baseband programmed to attack cell towers, I think we should boycott all Macs because it's possible for them to be programmed to do malicous things. In getting a Pre once a GSM one comes out.
In the interest of balance it needs to be said that the exact same exploit exisists for Android as well but that doesn't grab headlines does it?!?
...turning into?...
What do you mean turning into? They were always like this, it's just that everyone was too busy playing with their really clever fart apps to notice.
"Another pair of SMS bugs in the iPhone and Google's ( GOOG - news - people ) Android phones would purportedly allow a hacker to knock a phone off its wireless network for about 10 seconds with a series of text messages. The trick could be repeated again and again to keep the user offline, Miller says. Though Google has patched the Android flaw, this second iPhone bug also remains unpatched, he adds."-Forbes
Read the article completely before you make a comment.
@shriah
Yes the exploit was on Google's Android OS too and guess what? They patched (atleast) one of the bugs/exploits unlike Apple which has patched neither of them. Apple is too focused on fart apps and stopping the Palm Pre from syncing with iTunes to do anything.
@Michael: were you born yesterday? All of this stuff has been known for a long time now. Apple is communist, they control everything and the users have no say. I just find it funny that after Google Voice got pulled from the app store, everyone started saying they are switching to android and boycotting apple and what not, pfff all you guys are pathetic.
Fanboyism FTL!
You think? Wow. So you are seeing the obvious only now? Apple has been an asshole for years now.
I think this might push apple to release that 3.1 we are all looking foward to. MAYBE this is the push apple needs to let us have our much needed MMS feature.. :: crosses fingers ::
As for me, im putting my sim card into my non iphone. I don't want a hacker on my phone. that is a no go...
At most we would get a 3.0.x update.
MMS has been working without a problem since 3.0 was released, unless you're on AT&T, but there isn't much Apple can do about that.
Paranoia ftw
For having excuses that all center around security problems Apple isn't too interested in keeping things secure.
They could only do Web Apps because of "security reasons"
They were late with Copy and Paste because of "security reasons".
You can't JailBreak your iPhone because of "NATIONAL SECURITY"
What's their excuse for this being late? Because they certainly can't pull the "Security Reasons" card.
Oh yes they can. They are late because they don't want to release a fix that might introduce new security holes :)
They'll either find a dumb excuse or pull the no comment crap. The patch would be pretty easy to do in the month Charlie Miller gave them, no?
"Fix this hack? Heck no! Then they'd just find another that we DON'T know about yet! Better to leave things as they are."
What's to stop Apple from telling AT&T, "hey, block all text messages containing this specific code?" Charlie Miller gave them a month's advance warning, just because Apple didn't reply doesn't mean they're not working on the problem...
.. AT&T saying "No, fix the problem you dicks" ?
Right, so you think AT&T is going to intercept every single text message on its network, monitor each sequence of 512 and block those which lead into this exploit?
@MattWPBS
It's just a new line to the long list of things they already check.
Colour me embarrassed, honestly didn't know carriers screened for certain text message patterns.
What's to stop AT&T from intercepting the SMS messages is this (Quoted from Mashable):
“We present techniques which allow a researcher to inject SMS messages into iPhone, AndroidAndroid, and Windows Mobile devices. This method does not use the carrier and so is free (and invisible to the carrier).“
Check the last sentence.
http://mashable.com/2009/07/30/iphone-virus/
http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-usa-09/bh-usa-09-speakers.html
Think different alright.
Crapple
Good thing that Apple products have such a good track record for being virus and hacker free, otherwise, with the mind-share that the iPhone has, this could really turn into a problem for them. I trust that any unscrupulous individuals will abstain from exploiting this while Apple focuses on having jailbreaking your phone made illegal.
Dear Apple,
These are your ducks. Please get them in a row. Protect your customers, then worry about chasing the pennies you lose through non-appstore downloads.
Apple will keep chasing the pennies, they don't need to protect their customers. Haven't you learned anything yet? Apple has a VERY loyal following. Apple can come out with a new product today called iCrap that smells, looks and feels like feces and it will sell.
Heh... do what I did, I killed my text plan, blocked all texts to the mobile number, and text using GV mobile on my iphone instead...
oh wait.. that's right, Apple killed the current software fix for this bug.... and you can't buy it anymore!
You can get Sean Kovac's version of GoogleVoice free on Cydia
i have it
Kill it! Kill ze iPhone!
You have to reply to several SMS messages in sequence.
So if you receive an SMS that says
10001011001010101101010101101110010110101100000111010101110101010110
PLEASE do not reply.
Well, if what you're saying isn't a complete fabrication, the text msg would look more like this:
‹*ÕnZÁÕÕ
But I think there's a word or octet missing from the end of that.
But the Mac commercials all said that apple products don't have security vulnerabilities. You mean they lie? oh my.. ooooo
What a Mac user means is these actions do not infect a Mac.
opening an infected PDF file
opening an infected JPG file
inserting (not even playing) an infected Sony/BMG music CD
navigating to a Web page
etc. etc.
PLEASE do not say "more viruses are written for PCs, as they have 90% market share". That is as specious as saying, "You know, bank robbers target small rural banks, as there are more of these than Federal Reserve facilities." No, the Fed sites are guarded by guys in body armor carrying automatic weapons. The rural banks are guarded by a button to press to call the local sheriff.
@exNewt
Is that really the best comparison that you could come up with? With robbing a bank it's done on a case by case basis. Someone doesn't rob every bank at the same time. When someone develops a virus they intend to inflict as much harm as possible with one attempt. Windows does have a larger market share. You don't see terrorists attacking small buildings with few people very often do you? It's because the impact isn't as large as taking out large venues with large amounts of people. The same with viruses. If someone can find a vulnerability in an operating system that is used by 90% of the world, they'll almost always choose that target over one that is 9% of the world.
>navigating to a Web page
There have been several Safari exploits that required little more than navigating to a webpage.
Apple should think out of the box here. Instead of requiring every iPhone user to hook up to iTunes and update, why don't they use the very exploit they'd be removing to push the update out?
Where's your iGod now beeches? *points and laughs at the iT@rds.*
What a stupid fantasy. Stay hating, dork.
"We'd stop short of suggesting iPhone owners all turn off their handsets and take themselves firmly off the grid and into a completely disconnected underground bunker the moment the attack becomes public"
Nah, you just need to seal up your doors and windows with red tape. Or so I've heard.
That same Forbes article also mentions that they are going to demonstrate a similar texting bug in WindowsMobile that also allows complete remote control.
But Engadget only writes about the Apple bug; interesting. And all those strident comments about how bad Apple are, and how evil they are: you all look pretty stupid for slamming Apple and ignoring Microsoft ... it is obvious that you did not bother to read the article or do any research, you just mistook this as an opportunity to bash on Apple, and you let your prejudices blind you to the fact that Apple is not alone in this situation.
And sorry, but I thought all you commentors were going on about Engadget's supposed bias FOR Apple ... if anything, this shows a bias AGAINST Apple.
(But I have, for the record, never believed that Engadget are actually biased for or against any company.)
All of you are pathetic. none of you are important enough for anyone to want to waste their time hacking your iPhone. Get over it. If you hate apple so much why do you have the products and why are you wasting your time here?....