The iPhone Security Patch: Now You Can't Take Over the World
Aspiring evil villains, beware! Though researcher Charlie Miller recently told Forbes Magazine that a flaw in the latest release of the iPhone meant "someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this," Apple is releasing a security patch that is designed to end the flaw and, hopefully, thwart any hacker ambitions.
How to Get Apple to Release a Security Patch
If the security problem doesn't sound so severe, it's best to understand what went wrong in the first place. The aforementioned Miller along with fellow researcher Collin Mulliner went to the Black Hat Conference and demonstrated that it was possible to hack an iPhone simply by using an SMS message. Because of the nature of SMS messages, this meant that many iPhones were and still are vulnerable to ambitious hackers.
Less than 24 hours after the two researchers "exploited" the weakness, Apple released the security patch.
Of course, if it really was possible to take over the iPhone personal gadgeting world, it may be safe to assume that someone would have done it. According to Lenny Zeltzer of the Internet Storm Center (oddly, not a Doppler-radar service), AT&T would have been able to quickly shut down a spreading problem by squeezing out the hacker messages.
By the way, Windows users: you're not off the hook. It looks like there may be a similar "bug" out there that would make your devices vulnerable to the wrong kind of SMS. Keep updated with Microsoft to see about security updates for your personal gadgets.
Protect Your iPhone From SMS Pirates
Once again, you can check out the security patch directly in order to make sure that your iPhone is protected. The process shouldn't require much more than a simple download onto your iPhone, and it will work on operating systems from iPhone 1.0 to 3.0. If you want to learn a quick way to do this, plug your iPhone into iTunes and click "check for updates."
If, after all that, you're still left confused, make sure to check out Apple's Security terminal online. You can stay hip to the latest Apple security updates at – where else? – their security updates page.
For future reference, it will be important to regularly check for updates on your iPhone, particularly if you acquire new versions that still need bugs to be sorted out.