You've got to love people. Give them half a chance to talk about a product not even on the market yet and they'll give you a weeks worth of reasons why it will end the world. The iPhone is the latest product to be coming under such hackish attacks. You can find a lot of chatter on this all over the web. Specifically, here, here and here have some good commentaries/lists. In a Forbes article, "Is the iPhone Insecure?", the author gets some great quotes from security experts about how the iPhone will be the next great attack vector for hackers. Here's just one of many great quotes: "But unlike BlackBerries, Storms [director of operations of the computer security firm nCircle] says, iPhones are unlikely to have a remote 'lock and wipe' function that erases the device's data in the event that it's lost." Last I've seen, many laptops, the mainstay of not only the roadwarrior but the corporate exec as well, don't have this feature. Haven't numerous federal agencies been coming under fire in the last couple of years for having lost many laptops with sensitive data without the proper safeguards? Hmmm ... let's ponder this for a minute. Go on, think about it. Good. Now, I'm not saying that a device such as the iPhone needn't any security functions. But, as John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out, the iPhone isn't aimed at corporate networks. It's aimed at consumers, which is where Apple has been focused for quite some time. Am I and John the only ones who've noticed this? And, as the device is aimed at consumers, why would it have a remote lock and wipe feature? My RAZR doesn't, and I can get data on and off it. My brothers Treo doesn't, and that has actual PDA functionality. Hell, the iPod doesn't, and that's just a glorified external hard/flash drive.
The other drive is to somehow show that the iPhone is more open to attack than a virgin Windows install on a publicly known IP. The damn thing runs OS X ... you know, BSD Unix. Pretty rock solid and secure last I heard. So, you won't be spreading viruses from your iPhone to your corporate network. Unless the little bugger road in piggyback on a Word file. Oops, Microsoft bashing. The other two brilliant morons interviewed for this hack piece are Rob Enderle and David Maynor. Now, Rob makes his living selling his own shit as tremendous value add ideas. Fine, I suppose that's how most analysts make money. But, honestly, Google for any of his stuff and see just how much of an idiot he makes himself out to be. Or, you can go here and search for some of their articles dealing with the guy. Then there's David Maynor, sore loser and general cry baby. Go out again to Google and look this guy up. The whole Macbook WiFi hack was a hack job unto itself. This guy should have zero credibility in any profession. I doubt he quit his previous employer, SecureWorks. I think he was fired for the way he fugged up the whole exploit and relations with Apple. So, both these guys have some great what if ideas and scenarios, but, none of them really know. Why are they even speaking? You know, aside from the FUD campaign. I do, though, have to give Maynor points for one astute observation, the iPhone was created as a consumer device.
Moving on. We all know that people like their tech gadgets. I like my tech gadgets, so others must as well. Safe assumption. So, what happens when some exec sneaks one these babies into the corporate arena? The IT department better shake itself lose from all those empty Dorito's bags and empty cans of Mountain Dew and get to work on finding an integration solution. Which most likely won't include Microsoft. And, they needn't worry about iPhone viruses, none exist for OS X. You know, the OS that powers both the iPhone and the Mac. BSD derived. Yeah, that OS X.
Oh, watch Apple introduce some sort of iCal, iChat, Mail, iPhone, .Mac, etc. Sync Service With Extra Security in about a year's time (or October) to appease all those VPs of Do Nothing who can't get enough of their new best friend, iPhone. It will probably come integrated with Leopard Server and require nearly zero setup and configuration, much to the chagrin of OT loving, Microsoft suckling IT hippies.
0 comments:
Post a Comment