Jailbroken iPhone. Safe from malware and viruses?

[eshroom]

So I've broken in my jailbroken iPhone nicely. The new applications offer so much more functionality and I feel my iPhone would not be worth the money without these new functions. But am I putting myself at risk?

MacNN reported that malware was "almost guaranteed", not exclusively, but especially with regards to the jailbreaking scene: http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/11/14/iphone.malware.guaranteed/

So am I safe to enter personal details while surfing on my jailbroken iPhone? Or am I putting myself at risk of identity theft? One of the fastest growing black market economies.

Is this something that concerns you? How do you pick and choose which apps to trust?

 

[TheConfuzed1]

There is an element of risk with anything that you do. However, I'd chalk this one up to FUD.

I'm not too concerned.

 

[TheConfuzed1]

I just clicked on the article to see what it's all about. Did you even look at the date? It's a year old! This guy claimed an 80-90% chance of malware, and yet, a year later... Nothing.

By the way, this guy's job is to sell anti-malware. The first step in doing so is to make people fear that there is an imminent threat.

 

[nocoast]

The whole basis of that article is *********. The "expert" just assumes that since its being "hacked" that there are malicious intentions...when everyone in the scene knows that the regular firmware is the fw with the malicious intentions, he says it himself

you're out of the shield, you can do anything

Id rather "take my chances" doing anything than playing inside of a little sandbox.

 

[eshroom]

The article is a year old. But the notion still stands.

It is very much a possibility. Just look how easily each firmware is hacked apart, how tiny application can manipulate the iphone in ways it was never designed to be manipulated. All it takes is someone with the will, and in the largest growing black economy, there is definitely the will.

 

[RiGo]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

The article is a year old. But the notion still stands.

It is very much a possibility. Just look how easily each firmware is hacked apart, how tiny application can manipulate the iphone in ways it was never designed to be manipulated. All it takes is someone with the will, and in the largest growing black economy, there is definitely the will.

+1

my phone's jailbroken and i think security is a definite concern

 

[eshroom]

I hate to revive an old thread with an I told you so, but as many of you will have found out today, my concerns were not ill conceived...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8349905.stm

 

[dhlizard]

I hate to revive an old thread with an I told you so, but as many o you will have found out today, my concerns were not I'll conceived...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8349905.stm

And this is only applicable to those who refused to change their SSH root and mobile passwords after being advised to do so (and of course being in Australia).

 

[MasterDev]

I hate to revive an old thread with an I told you so, but as many of you will have found out today, my concerns were not ill conceived...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8349905.stm

Congrats there buddy, one small stupid thing two years later, and you want to gloat? Go for it.

And this is only applicable to those who refused to change their SSH root and mobile passwords after being advised to do so (and of course being in Australia).

What he said as well.

 

[dhlizard]

one small stupid thing two years later, .

Hummmm.... what calendar are you on (Oct 29, 2008 to Nov 9, 2009)

 

[ViViDboarder]

I hate to revive an old thread with an I told you so, but as many of you will have found out today, my concerns were not ill conceived...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8349905.stm

This has been covered oh so many times! This is not a "security risk for jailbreaking" it's just a notice that there are stupid people jailbreaking their phones.

Let me guess... Everyone who has gotten this "worm" has 1234 as their Windowz login. Admin and Password for the admin on their Wifi. Heck, it's probably the passcode on their briefcase!

Computer Security 101 for you guys... Don't use the default passwords. It's stupid.

And for the record... There is no security hole in the jailbroken iPhone that was not put there by the user. They chose to install OpenSSH and not change the default passwords. They were being stupid. It's not like someone wrote a virus that distributes itself via email or MMS to other iPhone users.

The jailbroken iPhone is no more open to malware than Android or even Windows Mobile. In fact, likely less since most installs are from relatively controlled apt sources.