Australia's questions over iPhone security: justified?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 24 October 2010 15:37

Business IT - Security

John Lawler, the CEO of the Australian Crime Commission, has spoken about the serious threat of online crime in today's highly tech-savvy world, something that extends all the way to the iPhone.

At the International Serious and Organised Crime 2010 event, the Australian Crime Commission's (ACC) CEO, John Lawler, gave an excellent address on the topic of cyber security in today's world and the many and varied threats affecting us all that are all too real.

The entire talk called "The Fifth Estate: Organised Crime Goes Virtual" is available to read at the ACC's website and makes for fascinating and sobering reading, delving into the deeply reaching tendrils of cloud computing which unify all kinds of information, the threat from mobile devices, new ways to police online crime, the sophistication of malware, the underground economy and much more.

In the course of the address, Mr Lawler talked about threats from the mobile world, noting a Sydney Morning Herald article which 'reported on the massive uptake of the iPhone particularly in the business market where it is the third most used system in the world and is being deployed or piloted by more than 70 per cent of Fortune 100 companies', and followed this up by saying 'Yet IT managers are swimming against the phone's tide of popularity because they can't centralise installation and security updates as with other software.'

It's true that phones such as the BlackBerry and those running Windows Mobile 6.5 have been much easier for IT admins to administer, but it has to be said that Apple has been dramatically improving enterprise support and interoperability with each version and must continue doing so to remain competitive and secure in a business environment.

Mr Lawler continues: 'This overwhelming desire for instant services at the expense of security safeguards is something I'll return to in a moment.

'But aside from the potential to facilitate traditional crimes using these devices, for example, by spreading spam, there is a growing criminal movement targeting such devices directly.

'In May this year Italian customs agents broke up a phony iPhone ring selling fake Chinese-made iPhones having correctly predicted that organised crime groups would invest in such activities as a less risky way than drug trafficking to reap big revenues.

'In August this year, London police arrested nine people and seized one thousand iPhones as they uncovered a criminal network that was using premium phone lines to launder profits and hide identities.'

Continued on page two, please read on!