How to Recognize and Avoid the iPhone Virus

Charlie Miller, an iPhone hacker and researcher found an iPhone security hole last month and intends to release the bug during the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Thursday. There had been iPhone activation problems last month and if this security risk will not be addressed quickly, expect a new iPhone virus to spread and complaints about the device to arise any day. quickpwn has the details about iPhone SMS hack and how to recognize and avoid the iPhone virus.

iPhone SMS hack details

How does the SMS hack work? Firstly, this hack does not requirreleae the victim to download any file. The attacker only needs to know the victim’s phone number. Miller says the attack is enabled by a serious memory corruption in the way the iPhone handles SMS messages. For the attack to work, an attacker must send hundreds of SMS control messages (different from regular SMS messages) and only the initial SMS will be seen. This attack works on both the iPhone and the Andoid. What does the iPhone SMS hack do? This hack can allow the attacker to make calls from your iPhone, steal your data, send text messages, and also spread the attack to other iPhones in your address book.

How to recognize and avoid the iPhone virus

If you get a strange text message containing any square box, even if it’s from a recognized number you may be the victim of the iPhone virus.

You have two choices:

1. Put your iPhone in Airplane mode: Go to Settings -> Airplane Mode and slide the button to Off.
2. Hold down the power button, and slide to turn your iPhone off.

The only thing we can do now is wait for Apple to release a patch. We expect Apple to release the iPhone 3.1 update by September, but hopefully this exploit causes them to release it earlier. iPhone Forensics expert, Jonathan Zdziarski and iPhone hacker p0sixninja from the Chonic Dev Team recently tweeted about the possibility to release their own patch for this vulnerability (only available through a jailbreak).