The iPhone botnet, coming soon to an over-priced phone near you

Originally Posted by yahoo news

Hackers could take over your iPhone, according to security researchers who say Apple is aware of the problem.

And the method is chillingly simple - a text message containing one square character .

Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner say they have found a flaw in the way the phones handle text messages, which could allow hackers complete control of the handset.

The hack would come in the form of a burst of SMS messages which contain a single character.

They would let the hacker control dialling the phone, visiting websites, the phone's camera and also sending texts to other iPhones, allowing control of them as well.

Mr Miller said: "This is serious. The only thing you can do to prevent it is turn off your phone.

"Someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this."

Mr Mulliner told Sky News Online: "In the business world this could have high value, if you could stop decision makers making or receiving phone calls.

"Mobile security is really taking off so we are just the first to discover this bug. There is no way this would have stayed secret."

Mr Miller will reveal the flaw in the Apple phone during a speech to the Black Hat cybersecurity conference today.

He claims to have told Apple about the potential bug over a month ago, but the company still hasn't released a patch to combat the potential hacks.

[ HP (Sauce) ]

As well as further proof that the iPhone is one of the worst pieces of consumer electronics ever to be jizzed over by badly informed idiots, this raises the interesting point that as phones become more and more like computers, what steps are people taking to safeguard them?

I'm sure none of us would dream of running a PC without some form of virus protection and probably a firewall and yet your phone probably contains more important confidential information than your PC does, or at least a similar level. Most people I imagine rely on the in-built security systems in their phones but as demonstrated here, this makes it really easy, once hackers have cracked the system to attack thousands of people at once.

Do you worry about the e-security of your phone at all? Have you taken any steps to improve it (Can you even get virus killers for phones?) or is it not something that's even crossed your mind before. Oh yeah, and if you own an iPhone, why?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

If all you want from a phone is to make phone calls then the iPhone is fine, especially if you like the apps (Which are the one redeeming feature). Of course, you can install similar stuff on any phone these days but the app store makes it a really easy process. The iPhone also becomes much better once you jailbreak it as there are some really good unlicensed apps floating around but again, you can install similar things on any phone without the need to install custom firmware which means you don't need to panic each time iTunes decides to upgrade itself. My problem with the iPhone is that features-wise it does practically nothing. At least with the last release they finally caught up to what most phones could do five years ago but they're still expecting people to fork out £300 for one whereas all other phones are free. I have no doubt that in a few years time the iPhone will actually be a really decent bit of kit and worth getting but at the moment, it's a touchscreen version of a phone from the 90's.

I think you're right to some extent about phones being not necessarily more advanced over here but certainly more widely used for their non-phone features. People don't ring each other anymore, they text or email or message over Facebook, all using their phone. Nobody carries a camera except for special occasions as every phone has a decent one and that's just casual users. Nerdier types who actually know what they're doing do all kinds of silly shit with Blackberries and even I managed to get Quake running on my Nokia. I think part of the iPhone's problem was it was designed by people with the mindset of a phone being for calling people and imagine what other cool stuff we could do, not realising perhaps that Nokia, Sony and LG have been letting people do those things for a long, long time already.

Anyway, I wasn't really looking to bash the iPhone here. I know that a lot of people like it because they simply don't need to do any more than it offers and most people aren't as into phones as, well, me and aren't perhaps aware of how redundant most of it's features are, probably because other manufacturers don't consider them exciting enough features to bother advertising (An ad about copy and paste functions? Come on Apple, Nokia 8310's could do that in 1996).

I've been increasingly concerned about cyber-attacks on my phone for a while now because of the amount of time it spends connected to the internet and with the bluetooth activated. When I get the N97 in October it'll be constantly online so I'm hoping it's got some hefty firewall built in or, there'll be something I can install to protect it because I'd really rather not have it accessed by other people or used as part of a botnet or whatever. I think the technology is advancing faster than the security and with more and more slightly naive people getting internet access in their pockets, the capacity for wide scale attacks seems rather frightening really.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by sprouticus

Alright, in all seriousness, the iPhone is a great piece of technology. The only shitty thing about it, really, is AT&T. It would be great if you could get the phone unlocked

I didn't set out to make an iPhone bashing thread, I honestly didn't, it's just the very thought of them puts me in a bashing mood!

You know, it is incredibly easy to unlock an iPhone for multiple networks. I'm surprised they still sell them locked at all because the ones you get over here are all multi-network. I guess Apple realised they'd get more cash selling them for use on any network then they would from an exclusivity agreement with O2. Of course, the first generations' silly Edge connectivity meant you could only use it on O2 but now they've put modern 3G technology in them, it's open season. But yeah, Unlocking an iPhone is easier than cracking a DS or PSP and that's a fairly common thing here so I would have assumed most GFF members with an iPhone would have jailbroken it by now.

Like I said (Even if it was hidden behind the trolling), the iPhone is fine if all you want to do is make phone calls and play with the Apps, in fact it's great for that but I think people are silly to pay for them when you can get literally every other phone there is for free with a contract with a minimum of bargaining (Go into any shop, ask if they'll give you the handset for free, if they say no tell them that their competitor down the road said they would, walk out with a free phone) and just about everything the iPhone does is done better by something else. It's a jack-of-all-trades phone which more so than any other Apple product, is a victory of style over substance.

All phones come with software to integrate your phone with a computer. Blackberry synch is exceptionally quick and completely painless and I'm pretty sure the latest Nokia software integrates your phone with iTunes and Windows Media Player if you want it to (Not installed the latest software yet but will this weekend once Nicola's new E71 is activated. Awesome phone, Nokia's version of the Blackberry essentially). Personally I'd never use a phone as a music player because it'd reduce the battery life so badly and the iPhone wouldn't be viable because Apple's constant efforts to stop people hacking them mean synching with iTunes is asking to have your custom firmware overwritten.

I think the whole texting thing is a cultural difference. It just didn't catch on in America like it did everywhere else in the world. Maybe Americans stay at home more than the rest of us?

What you can achieve with a text that you couldn't up until recently with an email was sending it when you're not at a computer. Texts are also handy if a phone call would be inappropriate, in a lesson at school for example or at the cinema or a gig or in a noisy pub. Of course now emails and texts are essentially the same thing thanks to phones doing both but their validity still stands. Over the years it has simply become the default way of communicating over here. You send someone an email and you have to wait for them to be at a computer to check it before you get an answer. Send them a text and they'll get it straight away. You could ring them and normally I would but if there's no answer, you know a text message is the quickest way to get a response.

You have to bear in mind that a lot of people around the world go places other than in front of their computer screens and like to be able to stay in touch with each other. I know it's a difficult and possibly frightening concept for some of you but it really does happen, I've seen it.

How ya doing, buddy?

Like I said, it's a cultural difference and as such, you're never going to understand where I'm coming from any more than I do you. I wasn't aware that you still had to pay for phones in America. Over here, the iPhone is the only phone you can't get free. Likewise, all contracts these days come with a text allowance or even more common now, completely free text messages. I think Nicola's most recent contract is 500 minutes of calls a month and completely free texting and data useage for £25 a month. Nutty reckons using a keypad is cumbersome but most people I know can probably text as fast as they type, especially with predictive text and auto-complete. Again, it's a cultural thing, everyone's been sending that many text messages for the last 10 years it becomes second nature. I can write a text accurately one handed without taking my phone out of my pocket if need be (Although finding the right address might be a little risky without looking) and I'm far from out of the ordinary.

If taking two minutes a year to install software is such a burden then yes, I imagine that using an iPhone is great, except the software it chooses to integrate with is iTunes so you're waiting that long for the thing to load up and tell you there's yet another new version to download each time you want to use it.

Your other points are all personal preference of course. I prefer Google to Searchlight, I really like the Nokia user interface and asking which has the better touch screen keyboard is like asking whose shit smells nicer, they all fucking stink. If your iPhone lasts that long then you're either very lucky or don't use it much, nobody I know gets much more than a day out of theirs even without using the music player.

At the end of the day, your list of things that are great about the iPhone are pretty much backing up my initial argument. If you want something pretty with novelty features that's easy to use, get an iPhone. If you want a phone for serious business use or as a genuine computer-in-your-pocket, get a phone that does that instead. The iPhone does a lot of things ok, nothing brilliantly. The Blackberry is an infinitely superior business phone and all the latest offerings from Nokia, LG and Sony are better smart phones, albeit a little less immediately accessible. As a matter of opinion, I think other phones look nicer too but if carrying a half brick shaped like a universal remote around with you is your thing then knock yourself out.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Yes, I can hide it no longer, my dislike for over-priced electronics with limited functionality and my strivance to make threads contain discussion rather than short statements are all symptomatic of my being spawn of the underworld. My secret is out. If you guess my name, LeHah, you win a prize.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I agree that the lights from phone screens can be a distraction in a cinema (So I use the low backlight mode if I'm in one and actually, very rarely use my phone in a cinema) but don't people in the US shout at the screen and clap during films anyway or is that just a Hollywood fallacy? I'd find that infinitely more annoying than a couple of people texting.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Rockgamer

Not to derail the thread, but did you really have single out black people? I've never even heard of this stereotype referring only to black people, nor have I actually seen only black people do it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not offended or anything, your comment just struck me as odd.

Then again, this thread has already taught us that you're an old fogy, so it's no surprise you're stuck in your racist ways.

Have you never seen Scary Movie?

FELIPE NO

Well naturally, it's much harder to spot darkies when the lights are off in a cinema.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?