Friday, June 22,2007 @ 11:40am
IBM: iPhone hype to test handset security
Apple's highly anticipated iPhone -- which recently garnered more than one million enquiries via AT&T's website -- may well attract the attention of malicious users looking to breach the handset's security measures. With so much attention and hype built up around the $499/$599 gadget, experienced crackers are likely to try their hand at attacking the mobile phone, according to IBM. "We've been following it since it was announced," said Neel Mehta, the team lead of advance research group at Internet Security Systems -- IBM's security division -- in an interview with InformationWeek. "It's going to be challenging for the bad guys to exploit them like they do other [smart phones] but there will be a lot of individuals willing to try because of the amount of buzz around it... We've seen some very determined attacks on other mobile phone platforms, like the Symbian platform. A lot of these attacks are going to be very hard to launch against the iPhone."