...The hacking of the iphone...

A serious isue recently cropped up that suggested that company Independant Security evaluators have found a way to hack an iphone simply by injecting a bit of code through to its web browser, causing ''buffer-overflow'' which is like a water overflow but except of water the verflow of technology and data.

That could be done either through a malicious Wi-Fi network (which redirected you to a fake website when you thought you were going to a trusted one) or via a malicious site that you were tempted to visit one way or another. The problem is that for a handheld computer, and unlike its Mac OS X operating system on its computers, an iPhone runs a very phone-like version of an operating system: every process belongs to the "administrator", which is the person who turns on the phone. "This implies that a compromise of any application gives an attacker full access to the device," the researchers note in a preliminary PDF about the attack (securityevaluators.com). And that's bad.

Apple was told about the flaws on July 17, and has until August 2 to fix them; after that, the exploit will be made public and the million or so iPhones out there will be targets.

But is this a serious flaw? Certainly. It was discovered within three weeks of the phone going on sale, and as more and more people get hold of it - and especially once the method that Independent Security Evaluators used is made public - the attacks will increase. Smartphones, as is obvious from a little reflection, are more handheld computers than phones, and Apple's decision to let this one sync via iTunes - including the transfer of logs detailing how and why any iPhone application crashed - offers would-be hackers a lot more "attack surface" to hammer away at.