By Neel V. Patel

A pair of computer scientists based in Europe have found a security vulnerability in the iPhone 5 series 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 to hide messages using the network protocols of Skype calls, Google searches, Bit Torrent, and Wi-Fi.  …[Read more]