What's al-Qaeda's take on the iPhone?
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Resolute silence on the paradigm-redefining device In-depth analysis In a fortnight during which just about everyone on the planet, excluding naturally those in a coma or temporarily indisposed up some tributary of the Amazon, has offered their two bits' worth on the launch of Apple's iPhone, it comes as a bit of a surprise that al-Qaeda has dismally failed to contribute to the brouhaha.â¦
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Researchers find that Apple's wildly popular phone is vulnerable to hacking, a weakness that could put your iPhone in somebody else's hands.
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Hackers could take control of an iPhone if its owner visits a doctored Web site or Internet hotspot, security researchers reported Monday.
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More jailbreaks than a spaghetti western The latest version of the firmware for Apple's iPhone has fallen to hackers less than a week after its release.â¦
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iFraud Fraudsters have been busy at work exploiting the hype surrounding last week's launch of the Apple iPhone.â¦
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With Steve Jobs' recent announcement of his intention to fight off the independent iPhone developers, the question worth asking is: How will Apple try to defeat the hackers: Software updates, or lawsuits?
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Friday is the big day -- the iPhone cometh. Our interest in the device is primarily to see how people will use it in ways Apple never intended. Tell us what you think will be hacked on the iPhone.
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On the eve of the iPhone's June 29 arrival, wireless-industry insiders are scrambling to understand their customers before Apple takes them away. The trouble is, they can't seem to agree on the problem, let alone the solution.
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Blog: Apple enthusiasts can perhaps become a bit too evangelical....
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âThe iPhone makes me mad,â proclaims Peter Svesson (AP Technology Writer). âNot, mind you, at the iPhone itself, but mad at cell-phone manufacturers who have saddled us for years with interfaces that lure us into labyrinths of menus.â Unlike cell phones with buttons that âcan mean âBackâ on one screen, âCancelâ on another, [and] âExitâ on a third,â iPhone âhas one button on its face. It always does the same thing: takes you to the top menu, where icons representing all functions of the phoneâmusic player, Internet browser and moreâare laid out in a clear manner. Wham, youâre out of the labyrinth.â That, Svensson laments, is âthe way it always should have been done.â
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With the iPhone, Apple offers a glimpse of what's to come.
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Until the army of intrepid hackers succeeds in commandeering the gadget's command line, the fastest way to any iPhone user's heart is through the web browser.
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Closing in on their Holy Grail The game is on for hackers trying to spot security vulnerabilities in Apple's iPhone and already they're scoring points.â¦
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You've heard it all before. The CEO buys an iPhone, falls in love, and leans on IT to shift its stack of tasks to make work-enabling his new gadget IT Priority No. 1.But as IT departments scramble to sync e-mail and slap together Web apps for Safari-based iPhone access, the question remains: Can Apple's ear-candy crush object draft off this executive effect to true enterprise mobile legitimacy, or are execs' iPhone fetishes jeopardizing the integrity of their company's mobile strategy?[ For an in-depth review of the iPhone, see "iPhone: The $1,975 iPod" ]Here we examine the iPhone ecosystem's evolving backdoor bid for enterprise, one that pits security concerns, vendor intentions, and gadget affinities against caution-minded enterprise IT.Executive inroads to the enterprise A midsize company providing inventory supply services to schools, government facilities, and other institutions across the United States was perfectly happy with its mobile Palm-based inventory software until the CEO and other high-level execs purchased their own iPhones.?Suddenly, they were saying, ?Hey, this is really nice,? and reevaluating their whole handheld strategy,? says Ben Gottlieb, president of Stand Alone, which provides business inventory software and consulting services to the aforementioned inventory supplier. ?Then came the questions about where the Palm OS was headed and whether their inventory application could be iPhone-enabled.?Mark Russell, vice president of sales and marketing at U-Line, a Milwaukee-based manufacturer of under-counter icemakers and refrigerators, had an iPhone for fun and a Nokia E70 for work until he accidentally crushed the Nokia device in his mother-in-law?s recliner. Instead of getting a new E70, he asked IT to sync his iPhone with the corporate Exchange server.?Our IT guy was nervous at first, but when Visto added iPhone capability to its Visto Enterprise Server, he gave it a try,? Russell says, referring to the mobile messaging service provider, Visto. U-Line was already using Visto to sync its smartphones with Exchange.Russell is perfectly happy with his business iPhone and has no intention of repurchasing the Nokia or any other device. And according to Daniel Koshute, U-Line systems administrator, several other employees are ready to make the switch as well.The above examples are not unique. Like the PDAs, USB storage devices, and Wi-Fi devices that came before it, the iPhone is pushing its way through the side door of today's enterprises, thanks to a sexy interface, a superior mobile browser, and executive pressure.?Apple has definitely achieved its goal of making you smile every time you press a keystroke,? says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner.And it's precisely that smile that has enterprise IT nervous. After all, Apple has very openly targeted the iPhone as a consumer device, doing little to enable it with the security, management, and other features the typical enterprise IT department demands from any mobile platform it supports. Not to mention that Apple?s enterprise sales and support -- or lack thereof -- have not exactly endeared the company to the enterprise in the past. Yet analysts and vendors of smartphone software report that enterprise demand for the iPhone is rising.?When the iPhone came out, we had a surge of enterprise IT customers asking when we would support it,? says Senthil Krishnapillai, director of product management for Sybase iAnywhere, which will soon offer an iPhone enterprise e-mail syncing solution. ?They told us that management was asking for it.??We?re definitely seeing enterprise interest in the iPhone, mostly driven by executives and rogue users, rather than IT,? says Matt Parks, director of product management at Visto, which recently introduced iPhone/Exchange/Domino syncing for its Visto Mobile Enterprise server.IT in the crosshairs Perhaps most disturbing to IT is the security quandary it faces in supporting the iPhone.?An enterprise must ensure that whatever device comes into the environment doesn?t breach any of the security policies it has in place,? Dulaney says. ?Otherwise, they have two choices: Be a hypocrite, or lower their overall investment in security because one breach, no matter how small, is a breach after all.?Although it does come with VPN capability, the iPhone?s built-in security just doesn?t measure up to those of its more enterprise-focused BlackBerry and Windows Mobile competitors.?Most enterprises cite two must-have security features for any supported mobile device: the ability to force the user to create a complex power-on password, and the ability to wipe out the data on the device remotely if it?s lost,? Dulaney says. ?In order to do that, you need the right hooks in the firmware, which Apple doesn?t provide.?And because they aren?t yet in the firmware, software vendors that support the iPhone, including Visto and Sybase, can?t offer those capabilities.Other security, usability, and management issues are also conspiring to ensure that the iPhone will not dominate the enterprise any time soon.As opposed to the BlackBerry, the iPhone doesn?t provide any inherent firewall or data encryption. Now holding up to 16GB, the iPhone's storage capacity gives IT jitters because it can be used to steal large amounts of data from an unprotected PC. Moreover, the iPhone comes with a built-in camera, which many IT departments do not allow as a matter of policy.?One of the things that really scares me, particularly with government agencies, is that Apple?s core iPhone framework allows it to take pictures or video and record sound without any flashing light or other indicator that anything is happening,? says Jonathan Zdziarski, research scientist for a security vendor and author of iPhone Open Application Development, which explains how to develop iPhone applications using Objective-C and an open source, community-developed iPhone toolkit.?This lets Joe Hacker create software that can secretly eavesdrop on conversations and record video, then send the audio or video file anywhere over the network,? Zdziarski says.Apple could prevent such hacks by requiring the user to visually authenticate an application's ability to access the camera or microphone much like Leopard does for applications that want to listen for incoming connections, Zdziarski adds.Others have taken issue with the fact that the iPhone is based on the OS X operating system and Safari Web browser, both of which have been around long enough for hackers to know how to exploit. Yet, at the same time, it?s a closed system, at least until Apple releases a native SDK in late February or early March, so security software vendors are unable to provide protection software for it.Where?s the road map? Even when Apple?s SDK comes out, nobody knows whether it will provide the kernel and hardware hooks that security vendors demand. And that brings up another sticking point that enterprises have with Apple: the lack of a publicized road map.Enterprise IT depends on the technology road maps published by established enterprise vendors such as Intel, Microsoft, IBM, and HP to plan and budget for hardware and software upgrades. Apple?s road maps are a closely held secret.?Since Apple is primarily a consumer company, they won?t tell you anything until the day of release,? Gartner's Dulaney says.In the meantime, according to Zdziarski, some prospective iPhone software vendors and enterprise developers have used the Open Source SDK to get their feet wet. Others, such as NetSuite and Salesforce.com, are taking advantage of AJAX for the Safari browser, but this doesn?t provide the flexibility and access to the OS that a native SDK would provide.Another sticking point: Apple?s enterprise sales and support staff are minimal, rumored to be in the teens, although Apple would not divulge this information, and Apple has never demonstrated a real commitment to the enterprise, nor does it have any developed enterprise sales channel.?Apple needs to develop key enterprise partners to help them get past executive appeal and get traction on the IT side, and they simply haven?t done it,? says Sean Ryan, research analyst for mobile enterprise solutions at IDC.As for management, Apple offers nothing even remotely similar to the centralized device management capabilities offered by RIM or Microsoft. There are no tools for monitoring mobile assets or enforcing corporate software policies, and the iPhone?s reliance on iTunes for activation and software updates just doesn?t sit well with IT, nor does the need to send the iPhone back to Apple for a battery change.Waiting for the SDK Finally, until the iPhone SDK allows client software installation on the device, there are several outstanding usability issues. Even with existing corporate e-mail solutions, the iPhone doesn?t offer true push e-mail, but rather syncs with the server once every 15 minutes, an eternity for true e-mail addicts. It also offers no native calendar and contact syncing abilities, so users might miss rescheduled meetings.Meanwhile, enterprise e-mail sync vendors such as Visto, Sybase, and IBM have implemented work-arounds to cope with the iPhone's drawbacks. Because the phone provides no data encryption, IBM plans to provide all its Domino access using Safari, with absolutely no e-mail storage on the iPhone itself, according to Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president of Notes and Domino at IBM. Visto and Sybase take advantage of the iPhone e-mail client, but both provide tight control over attachment-download policies. Sybase?s iAnywhere can remove mail data from a lost or stolen iPhone, but not until the next time it syncs with the server.These vendors and others are waiting anxiously for the SDK, after which a number of security and other iPhone enhancements are expected to be offered by third parties, depending on the depth of access provided by the SDK. Meanwhile, AT&amp;T has begun quietly offering business service plans for the iPhone, starting at $45 per month, although with no notable business-focused extras, such as corporate e-mail syncing, as of yet.Still, the iPhone has a long way to go before moving beyond an executive luxury to becoming a true enterprise player. Much of the momentum depends on Apple?s cooperation and an enterprise commitment it has not demonstrated in the past.?Apple is doing just fine with consumers and businesspeople who purchase the iPhone with their own money,? Dulaney says. ?Those two groups make up 85 percent of the 2.5 billion phones out there. What real incentive do they have to screw with the enterprise??Related articles Review: Supersmart phones for extreme mobility We pick seven serious business phones with all the bells and whistles, plus the power and flexibility that real mobile professionals need Review: iPhone: The $1,975 iPod Apple's and AT&amp;T's high-price gadget is a heartbreaking triumph of greed over genius Video: Two Geeks and an iPhone: Part 1 What we use and why Video: Two Geeks and an iPhone: Part 2 Tips and tricks for e-mail, safari, and more Video: Two Geeks and an iPhone: Part 3 How to add third-party apps to your iPhone Thoughts on the iPhone/iPod touch SDK Enterprise comes to iPhone 15 things Apple should fix in iPhone 2.0
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âIf lovinâ this phone is wrong,â pines Etan Horowitz , âI donât want to be right.â He calls iPhone âthe most fun and easy to use gadget Iâve ever laid my hands onâ and says that âcarrying it in my pocket made me feel connected to the world the way I do when Iâm surfing the Internet on a high-speed connection.â In fact, âSafari, the iPhoneâs Internet browser, lets you display up to eight Web pages at once, and itâs easy to move among them.â Horowitz âwas also impressed by the battery life, which gave me nearly six hours of talking, Internet browsing and video watching before I needed to charge it.â
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(InfoWorld) - Efforts to unlock Apple's iPhoneÂ continued on Monday, with hackers claiming "very significant progress." The locked iPhone only works with AT&T's EDGE network, and cannot be used with cellular service from other providers. Locked phones are generally used to help operators recoup the cost of subsidizing handsets for their customers, but AT&T is not subsidizing the iPhone, which is priced at either $499 or $599, depending on the model. Instead, the phone is locked because AT&T has a five-year agreement with Apple to be the sole iPhone provider in the U.S. Unlocking the iPhoneÂ would be a boon for users locked into a contract with another U.S. carrier, or for users outside the U.S. who want an iPhone. While initial signs indicate an unlocked iPhone is possible, hackers must first overcome several challenges. One of those involves circumventing the authentication process in iTunes that both lets users register for an AT&T service plan and turn on the phone's features, including its camera and music player. By Monday evening, U.S. time, hackers had made headway towards circumventing the activation process. But the phone remained locked at the time of writing. "We have been fairly successful in spoofing iTunes activation processes. This should allow us to activate the phone," poster gj wrote on the iPhone Dev Wiki, one of several Web sites tracking efforts to unlock the phone. "It may in fact also prevent the SIM locking from occurring in the first place ... though we haven't verified this yet." These advances allowed hackers to set and read data on the iPhone, including the ability to query whether a phone has been activated. "The rest of our work is legwork really, in understanding how certain functions operate with the rest of the phone," the site said, adding hackers are close to the ability to browse system files on the iPhone, a key step toward unlocking the handset. Once the activation problem has been overcome, hackers will be faced with other questions. For instance, does iTunes have the ability to recognize a phone that was not activated for use with the AT&T network? If so, how will iTunes react? After these questions are resolved, hackers can focus on unlocking the handset itself. That task is made easier by the iPhone's use of a removable SIM (Subscriber Identity Module), a smart card that contains a user's phone number as well as storage space for contacts and messages, instead of one that was hardwired into the phone. The use of a removable SIM card means the iPhone is locked using its firmware, which can likely be cracked. While hackers race ahead to unlock the iPhone as quickly as possible, iPhone Dev Wiki poster gj criticized those hackers competing against each other to unlock the phone, saying the lack of cooperation had slowed progress. "I can't emphasize enough how much this s*** stinks. Trust me, your ego is not as important as you think it is. If everyone worked together we would have been done by now, but instead we have a******* all over the world trying to 'beat us to the punch,'" the poster wrote. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Apple's iPhone is a toughÂ target for hackers, but a security researcher warned Friday that there are ways the sleek device could potentially be compromised. TheÂ iPhoneÂ has no security software, but Apple doesn't let people load third-party programs on the device, reducing the risk of infection from malicious software. But when the iPhone is connected to the Web, possibilities emerge, said Marius van Oers, a security researcher with McAfee's AVERT Labs in Amsterdam. He doesn't claim to have uncovered a specific security hole in the device, but listed several ways thatÂ determined hackersÂ could use the Web to try to find a way in. Apple is relying on developers to create rich Web-based applications that will be accessed through the mobile version of the company's Safari Web browser. Browser flaws are a proven way for hackers to get unauthorized code running on a system, van Oers said. "It's fairly easy to send someone an SMS (Short Messaging Service) or an e-mail with a Web link," he said. "And once you go to the Web link, then that server can inject code into the iPhone, and if that happens, [a hacker] can have full control." That's what happened with aÂ Safari flawÂ found by Independent Security Evaluators, a company that detailed its findings at the Black Hat security conference in August. By constructing a malicious Web site, the researchers injected code into the iPhone and pilfered recent text messages, phone numbers and e-mail. Apple has since patched the flaw. "Once you get access to the system, it's all over," van Oers said. He presented his view ofÂ iPhone securityÂ Friday at the Virus Bulletin security conference in Vienna. Although he is based in Europe, he examined an iPhone purchased in the U.S. His view of the iPhone's security is more cautionary and speculative, but rooted in the well-known ways that hackers work. Apple also allows the use of JavaScript when the iPhone interacts with Web pages, a programming language that has been used to exploit software problems, van Oers said. Further, Apple's multimedia application QuickTime has been prone to trouble, and there are several proof-of-concept exploits circulating the Web now for version 7, van Oers said. How that proof-of-concept code could affect QuickTime on the iPhone remains to be seen. Nonetheless, with the iPhone already popular in the U.S. and due toÂ go on sale in EuropeÂ in about six weeks, Apple can expect more aggressive attempts by malicious hackers to meddle with it. Hacking mobile devices is less prevalent than hacking desktop computers. But interesting malicious programs have been written for mobiles, including some that repeatedly autodial or send text messages to a premium number. The number is owned by the hackers, who collect the revenue. The chance of those kinds of malicious software affecting the iPhone today is probably low, but "that's the future. Let's hope it will not come to that," van Oers said. Â