Bottom Of The Barrel

iConspiracy

Conspiracy Theorist, start you engines.

According to a Russian hacker team called “web-hack", the iPhone contains “a built-in function which sends all data from an iPhone to a specified web-server. Contacts from a phonebook, SMS, recent calls, history of Safari browser” can all be transmitted. The hacker team goes on to say in their white paper that this is a possible “debug feature or a built-in backdoor module for some governmental structures”.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, formed in 1990 to defend free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights for consumers and the general public, states that "under the NSA domestic spying program, major telecommunications companies—and AT&T specifically—gave the NSA direct access to their vast databases of communications records, including information about whom their customers have phoned or emailed with in the past". They also allege that AT&T, in addition to allowing the NSA direct access to the phone and Internet communications passing over its network, and gave the government unfettered access to its over 300 terabyte ‘Daytona’ database of caller information—one of the largest databases in the world.

AT&T posted this message on their website last month:

"The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that AT&T may neither confirm nor deny AT&T's participation in the alleged NSA program because doing so would cause "exceptionally grave harm to national security" and would violate both civil and criminal statutes. Under these circumstances, AT&T is not able to respond to such allegations.

What we can say is AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers' privacy and would not provide customer information to any government agency except as specifically authorized under the law."

Interestingly enough, the EFF filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T last year accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the NSA in its massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications.

In a related story, a team of computer security consultants working for Independent Security Evaluators have reported that they found a security problem and that they could take control of iPhones through a WiFi connection or by tricking users into going to a Web site that contains malicious code. Once the code has been uploaded to a target iPhone via the web browser, full access is gained to address books, text messages and other other data stored on the phone. Also attack could be used to program the phone to make calls, running up large bills or even turning it into a portable bugging device.

Perhaps the new iPhone comes with one additional feature then consumers area aware of, called iSnoope or something clever like that, or maybe it is just a flaw. Either way, it looks like the iPhone has some iSsues.

posted by TheWino @ 10:17 AM