Security Firms Can't Protect iPhone From Threats

nk497 writes "F-Secure researchers are calling attention to the fact that it's impossible to run third-party anti-virus on iPhones, because the SDK doesn't allow for it. It's a problem, as they claim malware will start to target the phone. 'None of the existing anti-virus vendors can make one, without help from Apple,' chief research officer Mikko Hypponen said. 'Apple hasn't been too interested in developing antivirus solutions for the iPhone, because there are no viruses, which of course, isn't exactly true.' At the moment, the only worms faced by the iPhone have targeted unlocked, jailbroken devices — so Apple's not too bothered protecting users of such phones." While Apple claims that the iPhone's closed nature offers protection to its users, and security vendors maneuver for a piece of a market now closed to them, clearly both sides are pushing their own self-interest.

Comments

It's closed so it's perfect

[Fred_A]

And it's from Apple.

So it's doubly perfect. It's not like Mac OS has any security problems either.

So nothing to see here.

Re:It's closed so it's perfect

[rolfwind]

Anti-virus/anti-malware always seems to be a shitty bandaid to a badly designed system. Even running Windows 7, with UAC on, non-administrative account 99.999% time, always a non-IE browser, and very strict on what I run as .exe and where I download them, ad-aware just found some wind32 trojan.

Also, people forget this is supposed to be a portable device, even a phone sometimes. Remember what most A/V does to your desktop? I don't run A/V on my notebook, and I actually do want a decent battery life on my phone, as hard as that is to believe.

However, I know there will be problems with the iPhone. I do wish its safari had the option of "noscript" and stronger adblock plus than its own system among other things. And that when you do use it for the first time, it would have a video on safe usage. You can't upgrade or improve the user, the weakest link, but at least you can try to lead that horse to water that is education.

Re:It's closed so it's perfect

[plover]

Look at it the other way: it's perfect, until it's not closed.

What I mean is that Apple is doing the right thing. They should continue to deny anti-virus vendors from selling their warez, at least until there's a proven threat. And so far, there are none. From Apple's viewpoint, it's a great marketing tool to be so confident in their security that they won't compromise it by letting AV software on the platform. And for everyone who knows just how crappy AV software usually is (and how bad it drags down performance) it really is good news.

Seriously. As long as Apple keeps patching the holes the jail breakers use (which they seem to do within days) there simply are no credible threats. Oddly enough, this means the jail breakers are actually their best allies, in that they absolutely have the strongest motivations to hack the iPhone; and since their jailbreaks must necessarily be public to be useful, Apple can keep in lockstep with them.

That also means Apple must continue to keep it tightly closed, and never permit leaky crapware like Flash to run on it. Which indirectly benefits the rest of us, as that means sites that want to play nice with iPhones may provide usable Flash-free alternatives. We can hope, anyway.

Re:It's closed so it's perfect

[Anonymous Coward]

It's false for anyone to claim that there are any active worms or viruses on iPhone. The reported worms don't target the OS but rather the fact that users are (1) explicitly installing OpenSSH and (2) not changing their default passwords. Any machine at all that is on the internet with a known root password is vulnerable. It's similar to buying a router and leaving the password at "password." Is this a flaw in the router or the user?

Re:It's closed so it's perfect

[v1]

This entire thing is just laughable. "we can't write A/V software for your product because no one can write software for the iphone that is, or that stops, viruses". So, they're asking Apple to create the problem, which they will then be able to sell a fix for.

Just HOW stupid do they think we all are?

The only people right now that have any use for antivirus or antimalware software for their iphone are those that have jailbroken them, in which case they could also install and run AV software But there's not a big enough market for that at this point. If they really wanted to write it, they could, right now. There's just not enough profit in it yet.

F-Secure smells money

[cerberusss]

From the summary, F-Secure: "'Apple hasn't been too interested in developing antivirus solutions for the iPhone, because there are no viruses, which of course, isn't exactly true.' .

No, indeed, only jailbroken phones were infected. Thus the obvious solution for F-Secure would be to bring out an app in Cydia or other app stores for jailbroken devices.

Of course, rather than do something, their execs prefer to spend their time whining.

Re:F-Secure smells money

[purpledinoz]

I can imagine what Norton Antivirus will look like on the iPhone. First, everything would run slower, battery life would be cut in half, and a huge yellow annoying banner would attach itself to the browser reminding you that you are "PROTECTED BY NORTON ANTIVIRUS".

Re:F-Secure smells money

[sopssa]

But it does protect you, because after the resources Norton Antivirus takes, there's none left to actually run anything!

Re:F-Secure smells money

[wickerprints]

What I think is most telling about that quote is how an AV company has blurred the distinction between a "virus" and what basically amounts to a default password security hole. Sorry, but how does that make me want to trust you to run software on my device if you don't care to demonstrate you know the difference between these two types of attack?

The only reason why the jailbroken phones were vulnerable was because the default SSH password was not changed. No amount of AV is going to protect against a user's stupidity. This statement by F-Secure is about the money-making opportunity they're dying to exploit, and they're clearly riding the wave of negative publicity surrounding the closed platform nature of the iPhone.

Re:F-Secure smells money

[marcansoft]

I love how everyone pretends that recent trojan targeted "jailbroken" iPhones.

It didn't. It targeted stupid users who happened to have a jailbroken iPhone. Specifically, it targeted users who install OpenSSH without changing the default password (ignoring warnings to the effect). There's no vulnerability here, and a stock jailbroken iPhone is not vulnerable. The same exact kind of malware can affect every poorly configured UNIX system out there - for example, that router-based botnet that infected routers with default SSH passwords running Linux. There are tons of Linux rootkits out there too, and servers with poor passwords are rooted all the time. Does that mean we urgently need craptacular AV software on all Linux boxes?

On the other hand, it is true that a non-jailbroken iPhone has an extra layer of protection in the form of compulsive executable signing. Apple ostensibly has superior security (in non-jailbroken devices), but that's just because they lock down the device tight. It's "good" old Trusted Computing, the kind that does not trust the user. By jailbreaking the device, you're freeing yourself from nanny Apple's oversight. If it turns out you were better off with it, well, that's your own fault.

The new logic of security

[Opportunist]

I tend to be wary when using my crystal ball, but this time I want to make a prediction: This is an intended development, and we'll see more of it in the future. Jailed devices that are deemed intrinsically secure. People who dare to unlock their device not only open themselves up for infections, they also can't get any help to make their devices secure again because everyone who could or would offer them this help is locked out.

Now add laws that started to creep into our legislative where you're legally responsible for it if your device is insecure and doing something illegal.

In the long run, you will only be secure and not responsible for anything your device does if you don't mind not owning it.

No mechanism for transmission

[argent]

This is even more stupid than their attempt to sell antivirus for Palm OS.

There is no mechanism for transmission between one iPhone and another UNLESS the iPhone is jailbroken.

So Symantec only needs to write antivirus for jailbroken iPhones. And Apple would have no way to prevent them. So what's their problem?

News at 11

[damaki]

F-Secure cannot get money out of iPhone users, therefore whines and tries to scare executives.

Re:I see an opening for Android...

[nneonneo]

Except that this scenario is next-to-impossible on stock iPhones, because of the aforementioned code-signing restrictions, sandboxed applications and other mechanisms which prevent this from being a general problem.

Jailbreaking your phone makes all these safety nets go away: the kernel is patched so that it will run anything and applications are permitted to roam free across all of the device. At that point, you are on your own as far as security goes. If you, as a user, willfully ignore the instructions saying "Use 'passwd' to change the default password!!", then the resulting compromise of your iPhone is *entirely* your fault, and Apple doesn't even have to do "damage control". A rooted Android phone would suffer the same problems.

Phones must not need anti-virus

[Kupfernigk]

I am being quite serious here. Mobile devices need good battery life, and there is a limit to what can be done with batteries and screens. If you need an anti-virus program, you are using more power and the battery life is shorter: end of story. Forget whether Apple is Gandalf or Sauron, their attitude is 100% correct.

Going further, I have absolutely no patience with people who hack iPhones. A phone is an appliance connected to a public asset - EM bandwidth. People using public assets have a duty of care, and it's the failure of duty of care (tragedy of the Commons) that has done a lot of damage to society.

What I do on my own local network is my affair, but I think increasingly we should have a reasonable expectation that anything connected to a public network is properly secured and maintained, just like (in the UK at least) we test cars annually to check they are safe on the road. I'm afraid that the Wild West days of the Internet are increasingly over - and the excesses of some people is bringing down an overreaction.

Over the next 20 years we have to find a way to put the genie back in the bottle without killing the genie or spoiling the bottle. The politicians will try to screw this up. But the rest of us need to realise that we need to grow up too - we need to understand that if we want a reliable public internet and mobile phone system, we need to stop treating people who act irresponsibly as if their behaviour was acceptable or clever. Otherwise anti-virus and anti-malware software will continue to eat up too many of our CPU cycles, shorten the lives of our hard drives, and cause increasing frustration to those of us who actually need to earn a living, and have to use the Internet and the phone system to do it.

The iPhone is running windows?

[denebeim]

I thought it was running some form of Unix/Linux sort of OS.

I realize these modern day snake oil salesmen have convinced corporate America that their product is effective against all viruses on all platforms. However if you look at the definition file that they install on all the systems you'll see that the signatures list which platform they're for. I was curious so I greped the file. Turns out that while there's hundreds of thousands of windows definitions in the file there's only tens for linux and fewer for sun.

When pressed on this they'll tell you that they look for all those viruses so they arn't passed by the ftp/http/mail server on the unix box. While there's some merit to this position I don't see how it's at all relevant to the iPhone.

Re:FUD

[mdwh2]

Be fair now - they couldn't find anything else for today's daily Iphone Slashvertisement, so they had to run with this.

Unlock != Jailbreak

[netsharc]

BTW, if the original "anti-virus expert" really put unlock and jailbreak as the same thing, he needs to learn more about iPhones.

Jailbreak is breaking out of the chroot jail. It gives you root access so you can do wonderful things like install an SSH-daemon (which, unfortunately uses a standard password which the worms out there are exploiting now), as well as install apps that you want instead of only those that's passed Apple's draconian approval service.

Unlocking is SIM-unlocking, its purpose is so that an unauthorized SIM card (in the US that means non-AT&T) works on the iPhone. If you're using an AT&T card, you don't need to unlock, but you can still jailbreak. You need to run a software not authorized by Apple to do the unlock, so to unlock you *need* to jailbreak.

As for F-Secure, eh, fuck 'em. Their threat of Symbian viruses is also snake oil, it requires the most idiotic of idiots to see "Hmm someone wants to send me something over BlueTooth. OK I'll accept. Transfer finished. Let's open it. Oh it wants to install an app, should I install or should I deny?" and F-Secure sells you unproven protection if you say "install". Goddamnit, if you are so goddamned dumb, you deserve to get swindled by this company.