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Specifically, the vulnerability occurs in the way the iPhone receives and sends text messages via its Short Messaging Service, or SMS. Attackers could take advantage of weaknesses in the binary code sent by the SMS to an iPhone.
If exploited, the SMS flaw could be used by hackers for malicious purposes that include tracking a victim's location via GPS, executing malicious code that launches a denial of service attack or botnet, or listening in on conversations. Users could become infected by visiting a malicious Web site or clicking on a malicious link, typically through a social engineering ploy.
The iPhone flaw was first detected by hacker Charlie Miller, who presented the SMS flaw at the SyScan conference in Singapore on Thursday. He has plans to further discuss the bug at the upcoming Black Hat USA 2009 hacker conference, according to an Intego security blog.
Meanwhile, Apple is working on a security patch and hopes to have one in place before Miller's presentation at the end of July.
Miller, an authority on Mac OS X, is the author of "The Mac Hacker's handbook. He recently achieved a successful hack into the Mac OS X during the PWN to Own contest held at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, B.C.
During his SyScan presentation, Miller said that the flaw allows the hacker to "jailbreak" into the phone, which occurs when a user removes Apple's barriers to installing third-party applications, such as cracked applications and software not distributed by Apple or the iTunes Store, according to the Intego blog post.
Users who "jailbreak" an iPhone can also use the device on a carrier other than AT&T, Apple's exclusive carrier. And vulnerabilities in the iPhone's SMS function can give the attacker access to the handset.
However, despite the SMS flaw, Miller said that the stripped down version of the MacOS X in the iPhone was more secure than the full version of the Mac OS X operating system due to the fact that it doesn't support Adobe Flash and Java apps, which often leave a device vulnerable to attack. In addition, the iPhone baked in security hardware that protects its stored data, and is designed to only run code created by Apple.
While Apple doesn't have a system to rank its security flaws, the iPhone SMS vulnerability would be deemed "critical" due to the fact it can be exploited remotely.
After celebrity gossip Web site TMZ broke the story of Jackson's death on June 24th, Bing "did not deliver the best experience" for users, said Jacquelyn Krones, senior product planner for Bing News, in a Wednesday post to the Bing community blog.
TMZ's story was buried at the bottom of the main Bing page and in Bing's xRank result, which measures the popularity of celebrities and public figures based on their volume of Bing search queries. Like Google and other search engines, Bing was flooded with search queries after news of Jackson's death broke, but Bing didn't handle the rankings in a relevant way, according to Krones.
Microsoft responded by triggering what Krones called a "news go big" alert to ensure that Bing would provide the proper level of coverage for the event.
After an initial wave of Bing queries on Jackson's name and details about his death, searchers then shifted their attention to Jackson's famous Moonwalk dance move and to TMZ. The following day, queries shifted to names of Jackson's friends and family and to his images, songs, and videos, Krones said.
Microsoft learned that people most often look for images when searching for information about entertainers, and the team will continue to make adjustments to ensure that Bing can accommodate the surge of search queries -- and the subsequent related searches -- that arise in the days after a major event, Krones said.
The privacy setting changes were launched in beta July 1 to a beta group of 40,000 and will become available to all Facebook users over the next few weeks.
Previous to the launch, Facebook included a corresponding privacy setting every time it added a new feature. Apparently this became way too complicated, said Chris Kelly, Facebook chief privacy officer, in a company blog post. Subsequently, Facebook is streamlining its 40 privacy settings, spread out over six Web pages, into one, simplified privacy page.
The site is also upgrading its privacy settings with a Transition Tool, which allows users to organize their Facebook "friends" by groups and filter those members they want viewing their most private posts, images, music and videos they share online. The Transition Tool gives users who want to share information with a more intimate group the ability to choose specific Friend Lists, friends and contacts in school or work network, and friends of friends. For political rants and other information intended to be shared with a general audience, users can choose the "Everyone" setting.
The Transition Tool is also designed to respect privacy settings the user implemented prior to the changes and will be automatically rolled over once the change is complete.
The new privacy launch was rolled out a week after Facebook launched its beta Publisher Privacy Control, which allows users to decide who sees the written content they publish on a per-post basis.
"For example, you may want to make some posts available to everyone, while restricting others to your friends and family. You should be able to make that decision every time you share something on Facebook, and soon you'll be able to do this," Kelly said.
Privacy has been a point of contention in recent weeks for the social networking site. Coincidentally, revamped privacy settings also follow shortly on the heels of reported privacy issues in Bozeman, Mont., in which prospective city employees were required to submit their Facebook and other social networking site passwords on their job applications. The city revoked the password requirement following a sharp public backlash from the Facebook community and privacy rights advocates.
Whether Facebook can effectively defeat Twitter's rapid rise on the premise of simplicity and privacy remains to be seen.
First of all, Facebook is not Twitter. While Twitter's content is more streamlined, and therefore more simple, "tweets" are publicly available to everyone on the users' network once the user chooses them as a follower. Tweeters don't necessarily expect that the information they share will be obstructed from a certain group of viewers.
Facebook, on the other hand, is a two-way network that can classify its users into groups. Now users will have the ability to choose -- post-by-post, profile-by-profile in some cases -- who has access to what. While ostensibly more private, it is anything but simple.
Bloggers, however, contend that Facebook's new groups will likely add another layer of complexity to an already complex network that they will either misunderstand or ignore completely, without fully grasping the ramifications of sharing personal information online.
Kelly maintains that the revamped privacy settings don't entail changing the way Facebook shares information with advertisers. But critics maintain that Facebook depends on user click-throughs for its advertising revenue. In short -- more page views equals more dollars. If everyone clicks or defaults to the "Everyone" button, Facebook gets more money.
However, Facebook executives maintain that the changes are intended to make users feel more safe when sharing personal information online.
"We're committed to giving people even greater control over the information they share and the audiences with whom they share it," Kelly said.
Could Facebook be in danger of losing its 200,000 million-plus users to Twitter and other sites because of privacy settings? Not likely, but it never hurts to stay competitive.
Some reports Thursday suggested Apple has taken steps to address the problem -- assuming it's a problem at all, and not just a collection of idle complaints -- by pointing to an Apple tech support document.
The document suggests keeping iPhone 3G and 3G S "within acceptable operating temperatures," which according to Apple means between 32 degrees and 95 degrees Fahrenheit. That's all well and good. The problem? The document isn't anything new -- it's been available for several weeks and is Apple's standard response to iPhone heating complaints, updated to include iPhone 3G S on June 25.
Is that really a "response" from Apple? Wouldn't a response potentially get at what most consumers have said is the most common instance of iPhone 3G S overheating -- that is, when using anything that involves the iPhone 3G S' 3G wireless or GPS components.
Granted, the response to Apple's allegedly overheating iPhones has been a little hysterical, with one newspaper, The Inquirer, reporting that a company that does iPhone teardowns attributed the issue to "faulty battery cells" that could mean "massive recalls of iPhone 3G S units."
Massive recalls? Until more confirmed reports indicate an overheating iPhone 3G S are indeed the scourge some bloggers would have you believe they are, here's some advice: cool off.
According to Endgadget Mobile, iPhone 3.1 beta lets iPhone 3GS users save a copy of video clips taken with the device so that portions aren't lost when editing video. iPhone 3.1 also includes a video API that lets third party applications access and edit iPhone videos.
MMS messaging is enabled in iPhone 3.1 beta, but still doesn't work because AT&T hasn't added support for it. After being showered with disdain last month in the wake of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, AT&T announced plans to support MMS at some point in the future, and to offer it at no extra charge to customers with a text messaging plan.
Other new features in iPhone 3.1 include Bluetooth support for Voice Control, a new iPhone 3GS feature that lets users speak commands and also identifies the artists and titles of songs; device vibration when moving iPhone icons; and improved graphics support.
It's unclear whether iPhone 3.1 beta includes a fix for the overheating problems that some iPhone 3GS users have reported. Apple hasn't indicated a release date for the final version of iPhone 3.1.
iPhone SDK 3.1 beta and iPhone OS 3.1 beta are now available through Apple's iPhone Dev Center. Apple says the betas are for development and testing only and should be installed on devices dedicated to iPhone OS 3.1 beta software development.
Launched last month, iPhone OS 3.0 added long awaited features such as cut, copy, and paste, push notifications, peer-to-peer connectivity, and in-application financial transactions.
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