The iPhone Blog


Black Hat: SMS Attacks Not Just for iPhones

Posted: 30 Jul 2009 02:25 PM PDT

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Technologizer is reporting on the developing story on SMS attacks coming out of today’s Black Hat Conference sessions. Seems like while the iPhone is grabbing a lot of attention, almost all GSM phones are said to be vulnerable. Basically, they get around the anti-spoofing security and send data designed to get access and take control of the phone.

On the iPhone specific side, however:

In a final coup for the conference, Lackey and Miras demonstrated an iPhone app they call TAFT which can, at the click of a few buttons, transmit various types of attacks against specific, vulnerable phone models, including iPhones, and phones running the Windows Mobile 5 and pre-"cupcake" Android operating systems.

Vendors, including Apple are working on patching the exploit, though there is still no word which specific models or firmware versions are vulnerable.

More as the story continues to develop.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Black Hat: SMS Attacks Not Just for iPhones


TiPb Presents: iPhone Live! #21 - Google Voiceless

Posted: 30 Jul 2009 08:18 AM PDT

Join Dieter, Chad, and Rene for iPhone 3.1 Beta 3, Google Voice rejection, iTablet and Verizon rumors, Palm/iTunes escalation, SMS exploits, and all the news and how-tos. Listen in!

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Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb Presents: iPhone Live! #21 - Google Voiceless


Steve Jobs Pictured at Apple

Posted: 30 Jul 2009 06:00 AM PDT

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TMZ caught Steve Jobs leaving the Apple campus. So now, yes, he’s been captured on film and all gadget perfectionists everywhere can sleep soundly.

So, our take away is that a) Steve Jobs is a paparazzi level technoceleb. Congrats? b) he was reportedly photographed with an iPhone. Ironic in a little-brother sort of way. And c) Jony Ive is not only the best designer on the planet, but an intimidating looking bodyguard. Multitasker!

Once again everyone here at TiPb wishes him well, and hopes that he’s enjoying whatever fourth or fifth gen iPhone is in his pocket and will be revealed to the rest of us in the years to come.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Steve Jobs Pictured at Apple


Apple Time Capsule Dual-Band Routers + Storage Updated to 1TB/2TB

Posted: 30 Jul 2009 05:16 AM PDT

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Stealth update time in Apple-land this morning, as Time Capsule has doubled in storage to 1TB/2TB configurations ($299/$499). The dual-band routers inside the Time Capsule, identical to those in the latest Airport Extremes, support both fast 802.11n networking for modern computers, and simultaneously, 802.11g for mobile devices like the iPhone and iPod touch.

If you’ve been wanting to go dual-band and have a hankering to hunker down with a 2TB hard drive as well, Apple now has a glossy white option just for you:

Back up a lifetime’s worth of memories with the Time Capsule, a wireless hard drive that works seamlessly with Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard. It's also a full-featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station with simultaneous dual-band support.1 Choose from 1TB and 2TB models.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Time Capsule Dual-Band Routers + Storage Updated to 1TB/2TB


Charlie Miller to Demonstrate iPhone SMS Hack at Black Hat Conference Today

Posted: 30 Jul 2009 04:46 AM PDT

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UPDATE: Some folks are telling is that this is an iPhone 2.2.1 exploit already patched in 3.0. We’ll wait for an update from Black Hat before we exhale, however…

Almost a month ago we linked to an Engadget report on Charlie Miller and his SMS exploit for the iPhone. Well, today is the day he intends to show it off at the Black Hat conference.

Thanks to some last minute media attention, however, the general iPhone user base seems to be getting a tad nervous. And rightly so. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, in an ideal world, NSA expert come iHacker Charlie, who’s claim to current fame is using Mac exploits to win Pwn2own contests and free laptops, would work with companies like Apple and Microsoft (yes, it looks like Windows Mobile has an exploit as well), and those companies would patch the exploits as immediately as possible, before any “research” was publicly disclosed and any bad guys decided to use them as attack vectors.

TiPb will update post-Miller’s Black Hack disclosure, and hopefully Apple will roll the security fix into a quick 3.0.2 firmware release, or hurry 3.1 out of the gate.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Charlie Miller to Demonstrate iPhone SMS Hack at Black Hat Conference Today


RUMOR SMASHED: Apple Going to CES 2010, Steve Jobs Asked to Keynote?

Posted: 30 Jul 2009 04:28 AM PDT

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UPDATE: Ryan Block returns to Engadget to smash this rumor.

At no point did Gary even remotely imply that Apple would be present at a future CES — let alone state flatly that Apple “will be there” in 2010.

Oh, WSJ…

ORIGINAL. The Wall Street Journal is reporting, almost off-handedly, that Apple is planning to attend CES 2010, a trade show it has avoided up until now, and arguably eclipsed in 2007 when it announced the original iPhone at the then similarly timed Macworld Expo.

Apple pulled out of future Macworlds, causing the expo to change focus and time slots for 2010, but the idea of Apple actually showing up at CES instead? To quoth Dieter: Cats and dogs — living together!

The meat of the WSJ’s story is actually that Steve Jobs has been invited to Keynote at CES but isn’t returning their phone calls. While Jobs owned the spotlight at Macworld before handing the final show over to Phil Schiller in 2009, Jobs would be one of several Keynotes at CES, including lovable competitor Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.

Would Jobs settle for “one of”? Would Apple, after leaving Macworld and saying they prefer to set their own schedule for special events, and that they reach more people via the Apple Stores every week anyway, really want to return to almost exactly the same formula with CES?

We doubted it, and still don’t believe what our eyes are reading.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

RUMOR SMASHED: Apple Going to CES 2010, Steve Jobs Asked to Keynote?


Poll: Could Verizon Handle the iPhone?

Posted: 29 Jul 2009 07:22 PM PDT

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Techcrunch asks the impertinent question: can AT&T handle the iPhone. The pertinent answer thus far is: no. The iPhone is a consumer success the likes of which no smartphone has experienced before. There are more users using more features that consumer more bandwidth that likely even Apple or AT&T ever estimated, and it’s put an extreme hurt not only on existing infrastructure, but a hurt that’s growing faster than infrastructure expansion can handle.

The answer to many is simply to have the iPhone on Verizon, which is believed to offer a better network. While obviously splitting the iPhone between AT&T and Verizon would lesson the individual demand on both — load balancing the user pool, so to speak — we’re curious as to whether or not Verizon could have, or could still, handle the iPhone all by itself.

It’s largely reported that Verizon was the first US carrier offered the iPhone after all. If they’d said yes, and if the iPhone grew on Verizon as fast (or faster, given their reach) than AT&T, would Verizon have suffered the same problems — and bad reputation — AT&T is suffering now? CDMA towers, while serving more with less, still have their limits, after all. (TiPb’s heard that some feel BlackBerry hits CDMA networks hard — they ain’t seen anything like the freight-train of hurt the iPhone is bringing.)

So, what do you think?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Poll: Could Verizon Handle the iPhone?


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