iPhone security attacked at Black Hat

In a presentation at the Black Hat Security Conference (known for the Maynor Ellch MacBook fiasco), Charles Miller had a good rip into the security of the iPhone. Not literally but figuratively. He originally discovered a vulnerability in the iPhone that was fixed in the latest iPhone 1.0.1 software update. He said that his hack was not in fact an isolated incident, and that Apple’s security practices are poor.

Maybe it is just the fanboy in me talking, but if the iPhone OS is a version of Mac OS X, then it must be pretty darn secure. Every OS has faults that can be exploited, and OS X is no different. Miller states that Apple’s biggest vulnerability “is the regular inclusion in the OS X platform of older, outdated versions of open source code. Hackers can look at what flaws have been patched in newer releases, then write exploits based on the pre-existing vulnerabilities.” If this is something that hackers have the ability to do, it doesn’t seem like many of them are actively trying to find and exploit these “outdated versions of open-source code.”

This doesn’t mean that down the line a big security vulnerability won’t be discovered because of Apple’s security practices, but Apple has been pretty good in the past in patching potential security threats. No OS is 100% impenetrable, but OS X is definitely stronger than others.

Miller can slam Mac OS X security all he wants, but in the end, dogs and bullets may break Macs, but words will never hurt them.

Via [MacNN]