Much ado about iPhone
Have you noticed much in the way of Macintosh security issues recently? No, neither have we. The reason is pretty clear -- all the recent ado about the iPhone. And since, in the security business, no news is good news, we Mac users have yet another reason to be thankful about the iPhone: not only has the news industry focused on the iPhone (and, boy, have they!) but it's quite likely the hacker world has as well. Right now there's a whole lot more cachet to hacking the iPhone than there's ever been to hacking the Mac, and it's likely to stay that way for some time to come.
Despite a number of high profile news items on Mac security in the first half of this year, hackers were largely unsuccessful in denting the Mac's reputation for being a highly secure computing platform. Combine this lack of success on the Mac with a new platform (the iPhone) which offers not just the possibility of significantly more press but also the likelihood of much easier hacking of an Apple product, and you can see where all the bad guys are heading. A number of articles have already come out about iPhone security issues and hack attempts (for instance check MacNN ), and it seems quite likely that a successful, high-profile iPhone hack may not be long in coming. We'll see.
In the meantime, let's hope any iPhone hacks are few and far between, and that those that do appear don't compromise the security of the Mac (or even Windows) in the process. And let's hope that hackers continue concentrating on the iPhone for years to come!
Friday, July 6, 2007