[LINK] iphone messaging software glitch

[Jan Whitaker]

IPhone Bug: Apple Responds To Reports Of Creepy Software Glitch

Is a new facet of Apple's iMessage for iOS 5 leaving iPhone owners 
vulnerable to losing control of who sees their text messages?

Writer Sam Biddle of the popular tech site Gizmodo 
<http://gizmodo.com/5880593/the-apple-bug-that-let-us-spy-on-a-total-strangers-iphone>has 
highlighted what he deems a major security and privacy issue in a 
post titled "The Apple Bug That Let Us Spy On A Total's Stranger's 
iPhone." The "bug" of the title refers to an apparent hole in iOS 5 
that potentially allows strangers, thieves, stalkers and oblivious 
buyers of stolen iPhones to read every incoming and outgoing message 
that a certain iPhone owner sends over iMessage, whether they want to or not.

Biddle's article provides a real-life example of how this works: 
Apparently, a friend of Biddle's took her son's iPhone into an Apple 
store for a mundane repair. After the employee at Apple's Genius Bar 
had finished his work on the son's iPhone, he inserted his own SIM 
card into the iPhone he was repairing to ensure that his repairs had 
worked. After finding that they had, he removed his SIM card and 
replaced the son's SIM card into the slot, returning the iPhone to 
the family as good as new.

Alas, this is not the end of the saga. Afterward, the son was able to 
see every iMessage that this Apple store Genius was both sending and 
receiving -- some of them lewd and decidedly inappropriate for a 
minor. Everything the Apple store employee, who Biddle identifies 
only as Wiz, was sending on his own iPhone was being duplicated on 
the son's iPhone. Wiz was presumably unaware that his personal life, 
and the personal lives of his friends and lovers, were being 
broadcast to the high school student whose iPhone he had fixed days 
prior in the Apple store where he worked.

Biddle 
<http://gizmodo.com/5880593/the-apple-bug-that-let-us-spy-on-a-total-strangers-iphone>provides 
a frightening summary of what this bug could mean should your SIM 
card happen to get inserted into another iPhone:

[snip - more at the link: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/02/iphone-bug-apple_n_1249794.html ]


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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