Recently, an SMS vulnerability in the iPhone was revealed by researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner. They discovered that invisible SMS bursts can be sent to an iPhone which enable hackers to completely control any of the iPhone’s functions.
This SMS will contain only a single square character and if users get such an SMS, they should switch off their iPhones as soon as possible. Through this process, hackers can dial the phone, visit websites, turn on the device’s camera and microphone. The most damaging possibility is the fact that this bug can send more text messages to everyone in users’ contact list and thus hijack their phones as well.
According to Engadget, Charlie Miller is going to reveal details of it at the on-going Black Hat technical security conference. Miller claims to have told Apple about this SMS vulnerability. However, Apple has not yet done anything about it.
The iPhone is not the only smartphone that is vulnerable to these killer text messages. Windows Mobile, too, has these security holes in their system and Android phones can be knocked off the network with a few SMSs.