iPhone hacker reveals SMS vulnerability

By Dan Kaplan (www.securecomputing.net.au)

A security researcher has unveiled a new iPhone SMS vulnerability, according to reports out of the SyScan Conference in Singapore.

Presenting at the show, Charlie Miller, a well-known Mac hacker who works for Baltimore-based Independent Security Evaluators, released only minor details about the flaw, which reportedly can be used by an attacker to take control of the device to perform actions such as eavesdropping on conversations or tracking down a user's location through the phone's GPS capability.

According to the conference agenda, Miller's hour-long talk examined the security architecture of the iPhone and demonstrated how to perform automated SMS fuzzing (inputting invalid or random data as a test) on the device.

"[The presentation] will then demonstrate some payloads for the iPhone," the description said. "iPhone payloads are complicated by the fact that on factory phones, no pages can be made executable."

Miller is expected to provide more specifics on the bug later this month at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. The researcher reportedly is working with Apple on a fix.

See original article on scmagazineus.com

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