iPhone knockoffs and SMS security problems

Posted by rsanchez Published in Electronics, Gadgets, mobile phones

If you’ve seen an iPhone 3Gs being sold at an unbelievable price, then it would be wise to not believe it at all. There’s been an iPhone knockoff going around and knowing the difference will save you a heap of trouble and misery.

According to Wired, the shoddy phones have began invading Craiglist and eBay, therefore this prompted some Mac consultancy firm to buy one and show to the whole world how to differentiate among the real ones.

I did test some of the other features on the unit. While the icons look very much like the real iPhone 3G, the features were not easy to navigate to. As you can (see) in the video I tried to go back to the “Video” part of the iPod function, and I could not get that navigation link to work in the video.

Besides that ominous difference, he goes on to show that the phony iPhone 3Gs had some weird accessories added. Here’s the video below:

Be vigilant when buying an iPhone. It’s still better if you buy one from an Apple Store rather than from eBay or Craigslist. This way you can be positively sure that what you bought is the real McCoy.

Apple software has always been seen as something that is almost invulnerable against hacks, viruses, and such. However with the report given below it looks like the iPhone needs to buff up its security or improve its quality assurance.

According to Charlie Miller, the principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators and authority on Mac OS security, a simple Short Message Service message maybe enough for hackers to have absolute control over an iPhone.

“I don’t have a working exploit for it, just a suspicious looking crash,” Miller said.

If so, the malicious code could theoretically include commands to monitor the location of the phone using GPS, turn on the phone’s microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a distributed denial of service attack or a botnet, Miller said

Hopefully Apple will work on this very soon as hackers are assuredly looking for ways to exploit this flaw.

Source for Counterfeit iPhone 3Gs
Source for SMS vulnerability on the iPhone