A pair of computer scientists based in Europe havefound a security vulnerability in the iPhone 5series of smartphones that could be exploited by malicious software and compromise a user’s personal information. And the gatekeeper that makes this possible is Siri, they report in the January issue ofIEEE Computer.
The security flaw relies on steganography—the practice of hiding a message within another message. It’s related to cryptography (and oftentimes used jointly), but whereas cryptography is the concealment of a message’s contents, steganography hides the fact that a secret message is being sent at all. Classic examples include embedding a message in a digital photo. But the computer scientists involved in the iPhone exploit have also found ways tohide messages using the network protocols of Skype calls, Google searches, Bit Torrent, and Wi-Fi. …[Read more]
