Will the iPhone be iPwned?
The dark lining to Apple's silver cloud
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LAS VEGAS - The Apple Store at the Fashion Show Mall has a solid crowd for a Monday afternoon and it's easy to pinpoint the favourite.
A dozen iPhone stations collect at the front of the store, and they are rarely lonely. A stylish 20-something couple laughs as the man snaps a picture of the woman and shows her the screen. A brown-haired woman wearing a UNLV t-shirt moves her fingers over the display and smiles as the device responds. The ready touches and kid-in-the-candy-store smiles are likely just the reaction that Apple CEO Steve Jobs hoped to elicit with the device.
However, the iPhone has gotten a lot rougher treatment from the hackers and security researchers that will converge on Las Vegas for the Black Hat Security Briefings and the DEFCON hacking conference this week.
A month after its release, the iPhone has been poked, prodded, torn apart and made to reveal a number of its secrets. Hackers have already learned how to build and install programs on the device, a considerable feat as Apple has not published any application interfaces or development kits for the iPhone. And bug hunters have had wins of their own: On Thursday, Charles Miller, a security researcher at Independent Security Evaluators, will reveal the details of a significant flaw found in the device's stripped-down web browser - a flaw that Apple patched on Tuesday.
For Miller, there is no secret about the reason for all the attention. Since its launch a month ago, the iPhone and its slick interface have garnered rave reviews from tech-savvy users. Hacker and security researchers are no exception: Miller carries his own iPhone and quickly pulls it out upon request over breakfast Tuesday.
"The iPhone is cool," he said.
Yet, the popularity of the sleek phone has also lured hackers to pull apart the device and flout Apple's restrictions on developing software for the device. And, just as they took to Macs and MacBooks, security researchers have focused on finding flaws in the iPhone's operating system and software. It's the dark lining to Apple's silver cloud.
"The bottom line is that people will find ways of accessing the device," said Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer for anti-virus firm F-Secure and an expert on mobile-device security. "I'm guessing there will be more activity for the next six months on the iPhone then there will be on the Macs or OS X."
Already, the first month's flurry of hacking rivals the attacks of late last year that focused on cracking the security surrounding the next-generation Blu-Ray and HD DVD video formats. The poking and prodding have also born fruit -sSecurity researchers have already identified severe design weaknesses in the iPhone.
At the top of the list, the device's operating system runs every application with administrator privileges, according to Miller and his cohorts at Independent Security Evaluators, turning a simple breach of any application into a breach of the system. In addition, both the iPhone's stack and heap are executable and the layout of programs in memory are not randomised - two factors that make exploitation of any vulnerabilities much easier, he said.
"I think people are letting Apple off easy," Miller said. "You need to design the iPhone so that even if there is a problem in Safari, people don't completely take over your phone."
COMMENTS
Dissappointing sales?
Please can you stop trotting out this anti-hype rubbish.
Certain analysts are the only ones disappointed by the level of sales. Most analysts predicted around the number sold and Apple didn't make any promises with regards to the number sold in the first 30 hours.
Some people would say that 150k units sold in 30 hours is very good you know?
Consider a new source, Reg
Apparently this "Hyppönen" chap doesn't read the news, or he selectively reads it.
"From the attacker's point of view, it is a hard device to attack, because there is no SDK (software development kit) - it's a closed system,"
Except for the fact that people have already figured out how to develop and run applications on it. And that existing applications, namely the OS, have been reverse-engineered in less than a month, say?
"Finally, some researchers question whether compromising an iPhone would gain anything of value for the attacker."
Well, it can be used as a listening device. I certainly see government-level espionage, def. corporate espionage, in the works with this. If a person uses their iPhone to access bank stuff, it apparently can be monitored just like a PC can with a keylogger.
"The iPhone's restrictions on installing non-Apple software can be seen as a security feature as well, as long as the protections make it difficult to create programs for the phone"
Except if it uses a simple check to verify that it's proper Apple software, then all a programmer has to do is reverse-engineer the legit Apple apps and find the string and inject it into their own programs. Even if Apple uses a grossly-ineffective method of checking over the 'net of a program's authenticity, well, that's simple! Redirect the authentication server to a malicious one via editing of the hosts file, and the methods employed there can easily be ascertained by running an Ethereal/ettercap scan and reading the packets.
Come on El Reg, don't get your soundbytes from F-Secure. Go back to Sophos. While Graham Cluely doesn't open his mouth much for the soundbytes, he at least doesn't sound like a twunt when he does.
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