After hackers recently pointed out some vulnerabilities in the iPhone’s browser, Apple must have got right to work to get them patched. As of this morning, Apple made the first official security update for the iPhone available.
The vulnerabilities were recently discovered by three researchers - Dr. Charlie Miller, Jake Honoroff and Joshua Mason of the software security team at Independent Security Evaluators which is an information security consulting firm.
The security vulnerabilities: a big gaping hole was hiding in the iPhone’s Safari browser software, which could let hackers take control of your iPhone.
Basically a hacker could use a bit of nasty code and Wi-Fi, then could gain full administrative access to the iPhone and its software.
The newly released iPhone 1.0.1 update only patches these holes. It does not offer any new widgets or features. The actual sections of code being repaired are in the iPhone’s WebCore and WebKit.
Talking with friends this morning, the update process is pretty quick. It took about 10 seconds to download the patch and then a full six minutes for the patch to be installed on the iPhone. After the patch was installed, the iPhone rebooted itself and the patching was complete.
Apparently there isn’t any noticeable change in the way the iPhone’s browser operates or functions but of course if you have an iPhone, you’ll want to download and install this patch right away.
August 20th, 2008
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