macnn

01/26/2008, 1:25pm, EST

Saturday, January 26th

DoS attack on iPhone causes memory leak, freeze

iPhone owners should be on guard against a new threat, which fortunately doesn't harm the device, but still induces a freeze by taking all available system memory. According to security firm SecurityFocus, the vulnerability is exposed by a Denial of Service attack, when a maliciously crafted webpage is viewed. The page will insert code into the iPhone, which continually eats up available system memory before causing a kernel panic.

While not the first attack on the iPhone, SecurityFocus believes it could be harmful to the device's wellbeing by potentially executing remote code.

The DoS exploit has been verified to work on the 1.1.2 iPhone firmware; Apple has not commented on the issue


Filed under: iPhone, security, hacks
Other story tags: vulnerability, Panic, Denial of Service

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imagine engine
iPhone security
0
01/26, 5:42pm, EST
Does this affect users running iPhone firmware 1.1.3?
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined Aug 2007
User is offline
ViktorCode
old bug?
0
01/27, 6:02am, EST
Visiting linked page gave me idea of some old Safari flow rediscovered on iPhone. If you look on the list of vulnerable systems beside iPhone 1.1.2 you will find Mac OS X 10.4.2 and earlier version of Tiger. Firmware 1.1.3 is not listed.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined Jan 2006
User is offline
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