iPhone Is No More Safe  iPhone |
The security experts have revealed that the Apple Inc's iPhone is vulnerable to hacking. The hackers can control the popular device using tactic for identity theft and other crimes.
Experts at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, a top forum for exchanging information on computer security threats, said that the users should be warned about the new threat and Apple should take immediate steps to repair the vulnerability.
"It's scary. I don't want people taking over my iPhone," Charlie Miller, a security analyst with consulting firm Independent Security Evaluators, said in an interview.
A method that allows hackers to easily knock a victim's iPhone off a carrier's network was discovered by Miller and Collin Mulliner, a Ph D student at the Technical University of Berlin.
This method does not allow users to make calls, access the Internet and exchange text messages, they added. They also said that the hackers can develop software to break into iPhones within about two weeks with the information they presented at Black Hat.
They said they had warned Apple about the flaw in mid July, but the company is yet to fix the problem. "Apple's credibility and reputation could get hurt if they don't respond. Positive buzz is good; negative buzz is much more harmful," said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research.
About 4,000 security professionals attended the conference, including some who are really hackers. The software flaws are searched so that they can be rectified but the same information is used by hackers to commit crimes.
A computer code via SMS system of the phone enables hackers to break into iPhones. Mobile phones use SMS to send and receive text messages along with software upgrades. The phone's users cannot detect that it is receiving the malicious code.
It is not illegal to disclose ways to hack into computer systems, though it is against the law to use it to break into them. When asked why they would hand over such information to criminals, security experts said they felt it was necessary to alert the public that iPhones were just as vulnerable to attack as personal computers.
"If we don't talk about it, somebody is going to do it silently. The bad guys are going to do it no matter what," Mulliner said.
The hacks on iPhones running on networks of four carriers in Germany along with AT&T Inc in the United States have been successfully tested. Miller and Mulliner said they believed the methods will work with iPhone carriers around the world.
The two said that they had used a similar method to break into phones running on Google Inc's Android operating system. Google rectified the flaw after they informed the company of the vulnerability.
