discovered a flaw in the iPhone platform that would allow them to potentially take over the smartphone. It will explain the principle at a conference he will give at the Black Hat event in late July held in Las Vegas and highlighting the discovery of vulnerabilities in computer systems.

A first presentation was made at the beginning of July 09 in Singapore Syscan but at this time Charlie Miller could only make an iPhone remote crash with a malicious SMS. Since the method has been optimized and a form of control would be possible.

"SMS is a great attack vector for mobile phones. All I need is your phone number. I do not even need you to click a link or anything else, "he says.

The vulnerability has been submitted to Apple for six weeks but the company does not appear to have provided a patch since then. The takeover is actually limited but could serve as a basis for the development of malware capable of going further.


Who's afraid of SMS?
In another genre, but also SMS, two other researchers will present a method that takes a text message to a message only from the servers of the operator, as in the case of SMS configuration.

It would then be possible to attack changing the settings of the phone by sending a simple SMS. Security experts warn regularly on the next opportunity to create networks of mobile botnets and the dangers of piracy remote data, the operation of smartphones is getting closer to that of computers and the communication is always more extensive .

SMS, despite his advanced age (in time of the mobile industry), is a particularly interesting way to deal with mobile phones. The techniques presented at the Black Hat could serve as building blocks for more sophisticated attacks.