Apple Pushes Unwanted Software To PCs, Again

itwbennett writes "Blogger Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wags his finger at Apple for indiscriminately pushing the iPhone Configuration Utility 2.1 update out to Windows users, since it is a tool for business system administrators to set up and administer corporate iPhones — the blogger himself (and practically every other iPhone user) not being of the corporate iPhone user persuasion. But more than just unnecessary, the update actually puts him and millions of other iPhone owners/Windows PC users at increased risk by installing 'not just a configuration program, but the Apache Web server as well,' says Vaughan-Nichols. 'A Web server like the one Apple [is] adding to your PC... [is] a gateway just asking to be hammered on by an attacker. Managed properly Apache is as safe a Web server as you'll ever find, but ordinary PC users shouldn't try to manage it, and even an expert can't do anything with it if they don't know it's there.'" Reader CWMike notes that Apple pulled the iPhone Configuration Utility from the update list after a few hours.

Comments

Re:Any verification on the Apache web server?

[zn0k]

Should have checked more carefully before posting - the first link from the summary in turn links to http://www.itexpertmag.com/telecoms/supporting-mobile-email-on-multiple-handsets, which mentions a Ruby web service on port 3000 for iPhone configuration. Again, there's nothing listening on port 3000. I have no idea why the first summary link uses to support the idea that Apache gets installed.

Re:Not really...

[Kalriath]

I love how it changes the registry to force the browser to load QuickTime for every PNG file on a page. Fuck does that take forever to fix! (Or load a page, for that matter).