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Hackers Find Remote iPhone Crack
Al writes "Two researchers have found a way to run unauthorized code on an iPhone remotely. This is different than 'jailbreaking,' which requires physical access to the device. Normally applications have to be signed cryptographically by Apple in order to run. But Charles Miller of Independent Security Evaluators and Vincenzo Iozzo from the University of Milan found more than one instance in which Apple failed to prevent unauthorized data from executing. This means that a program can be loaded into memory as a non-executable block of data, after which the attacker can essentially flip a programmatic switch and make the data executable. The trick is significant, say Miller and Iozzo, because it provides a way to do something on a device after making use of a remote exploit. Details will be presented next month at the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas." The attack was developed on version 2.0 of the iPhone software, and the researchers don't know if it will work when 3.0 is released.
Apple are brown hatters, not black.
Does that mean if we go to the "wrong" web site we can enable Wi-Fi tethering without have to pay extra?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The title and summary are very misleading. The exploit is to run unauthorized code. They have not presented an injection path. While this is not good it is not as bad as having a "Remote iPhone Crack."
To this date, I cannot think of any cell phone viruses that have existed and spread. I would assume that is because pretty much every cell phone is different, and writing a virus for one specific phone would be a waste of time, since it would represent only a fraction of a percent of the user base. (Usually, when you write a virus, you want it to spread as far and wide as possible, right?) However, with the popularity of the iPhone, I could see a malicious person writing a virus that would infect all of the Apple phones out there, since there are a lot of iPhones on the networks.
Could this crack be used for that? If so, are we going to see an antivirus program on the next iteration of the iPhone?
I have a bad feeling about this...
My experience with dealing with geeks seem to show me that the distribution of intelligence is about on par with the rest of the population, in its normal distribution. We like to see our selfs better then everyone else but that really isn't the case.
I have found that people who are on the manufacturing floor of a factory are just as likely to pick up an abstract explanation as a geek would. Sure geeks have memorized some terms and vocabulary however for the most part their ability to understand is about the same as everyone else.
Conversely there are a lot of people who know things that it is difficult for me to comprehend who are not geeks about the same amount who are geeks.
You analogy is off. Because geeks are a sub-culture Nobel Prise Winners are people who won an award for their excellence.
What does it take to be a geek. Watch a lot of Star Trek, or Sci-Fi, Read Comic Books, Write code (I was able to do then when I was 6 years old) none of this requires a high intelligence, to preform at some level.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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Simply get your application published and give people some incentive to download it (for free). Once your intended target or target quota has installed download a "media file" that's actually the malicious binary. Then it's just a matter of smashing your own application's stack to run the code.