Loose-lipped iPhones top the list of smartphones exploited by hacker

[Vehl]

As a security professional who gets paid to hack into high-value networks, Mark Wuergler often gets a boost when his targets use smartphones, especially when the device happens to be an iPhone that regularly connects to Wi-Fi networks.

That's because the iPhone is the only smartphone he knows of that transmits to anyone within range the unique identifiers of the past three wireless access points the user has logged into. He can then use off-the-shelf hardware to passively retrieve the routers' MAC (media access control) addresses and look them up in databases such as Google Location Services and the Wireless Geographic Logging Engine. By allowing him to pinpoint the precise location of the wireless network, iPhones give him a quick leg-up when performing reconnaissance on prospective marks.

..
..

The exposure of MAC addresses extends not only to iPhones, but to all Apple devices with Wi-Fi capabilities, he said. It means that whenever the wireless features are enabled and not connected to a network—for instance, during a brief encounter at a Starbucks—they broadcast the unique identifiers, and it's trivial for anyone nearby to record them.

Apple did not respond to our requests for comment for this article.

more here
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/03/loose-lipped-iphones-top-the-list-of-smartphones-exploited-by-hacker.ars?clicked=related_right


Screenshot of information gleaned from Apple products due to this flaw, by the Security analyst. Hackers have access to this information

[IMG][/IMG]

Edited to add: Right click and select "view image" to view a high-res version of the image.

Contact details
Called list.
images.
apps..everything is accessible to the hacker.

^^ So much for the "it just works" by the most "innovative" company. It just works ...by being the most insecure consumer device on market, according to the article. It takes special skill all right.....after all its not easy for a company to have this bug in ALL of its Wifi-capable devices.

This just underscores what non Apple users have been saying all along..that the claims that Apple products are more secure, more stable are flat out wrong, and do not have any statistics backing them up. People willingly pay hundreds if not thousands of $$$ more for stuff that is essentially no different(at times even less capable) from the other stuff out there.


on a related note

Study shows Ios more prone to crashes than Andorid.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/02/02/does-ios-crash-more-than-android-a-data-dive/

[tridim]

1. This info will never penetrate the RDF

[Ron Obvious]

2. I expect...

The exposure of MAC addresses extends not only to iPhones, but to all Apple devices with Wi-Fi capabilities, he said. It means that whenever the wireless features are enabled and not connected to a network—for instance, during a brief encounter at a Starbucks—they broadcast the unique identifiers, and it's trivial for anyone nearby to record them.

I expect someone will come along and tell us this is actually a good thing and a wonderful feature soon.

[applegrove]

3. I don't have wifi and this is why.

[GregHackShop]

4. Spam deleted by Morning Dew (MIR Team)

[Ron Green]

5. Haters gonna hate.

Assholes gonna hack.

[madinmaryland]

6. As I have said before, DON'T BE AN iDouche. mt

[Vehl]

7. :)

[IMG][/IMG]

[Zalatix]

8. Please stop bashing Apple fans. That said, the thing that keeps catching my attention is that

Macintoshes now use the Intel processor.

If I were an Apple fan, I would have wept over that. Part of my desire to get an Apple was that it used a different type of processor. I liked the Power chip, I have a newer-generation Amiga armed with one of those.

[Thegonagle]

9. Apple made the switch to Intel several years ago, and many fans did mourn

the passing of the Motorola PowerPC era.

But times change, and Motorola could no longer keep up with Apple's requirements, so they switched to someone who could.

Oh well, technology marches on. At least now, really, really patient types can build a "Hackintosh," a computer based on a PC motherboard/processor combo that runs Mac OSX. (Building such a beast is not without its challenges, and I haven't tried it myself, but it apparently works for many.)