Hackers Can Launch iPhone Attack Via SMS

Charlie Miller, Independent Security Evaluators researcher, and Collin Mulliner, a Ph.D. student at the University of Berlin, demonstrated during a Black Hat presentation that hackers can break into an iPhone via the SMS protocol to launch a denial-of-service (DOS) attack or take control of a victim's phone.

"Its lots of fun to kick friends off the network, but it's even more fun to own their phone," Miller said, who demonstrated the exploits on both the iPhone and Android.

The hack is enabled by memory issues in the way the iPhone handles the SMS protocol, Miller said. Miller demonstrated Thursday that the attack can be used to launch a DOS attack, which could be used to shut off an iPhone, deface text or otherwise reconfigure the keys.

The DOS hack is launched by flooding the iPhone with hundreds of SMS control messages, which allows hackers to keep their victims off the network indefinitely.

A similar SMS hack can be conducted on the Google Android and the Windows Mobile platforms.