The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Intego points to a Dutch hacker doing the same thing, but worse, actually trying to extort 5 euros to fix the problem! After much protest by those affected, the hacker has agreed to provide a fix free of charge and to refund all monies collected.
Other online criminals may have figured this out earlier, and could easily have been stealing data from affected jailbroken iPhones what could now be years, with none the wiser, and if there are any other ways to silently steal data from iPhones or other smartphones, it’s definitely not public knowledge.
Still, despite the latest iPhone virus hoohah, smartphones and iPhones are not subject to the wave of virus and malware attacks common to Windows PCs.
Naturally this says a lot more about the way Windows is written and protected, as Linux and Mac fans will readily point out, as well as being ripe for targeting from both a security perspective and from a user being the weakest link, thanks to Windows being the dominant consumer computing platform and having the largest number of users.
With Apple using the iPhone OS, based on the Mac OS, based on BSD which is a flavour of Unix, and with Nokia moving towards its own Linux based OS and Google’s Android also based on Linux, we are at least on a more secure platform to start with.
As we’ve seen with the iPhone OS, Nokia’s Maemo 5.0 and Google’s Android, Unix/Linux based operating systems can deliver beautiful handheld computing experiences, far superior to the mess of Windows Mobile, which itself has also effectively avoided any mass and widespread malware outbreaks.
In essence, it’s yet another massive wake-up call to everyone that protecting your identity, your device and ensuring the highest level of online security is more important than ever before, especially so when hacking and jailbreaking devices beyond the manufacturer’s pre-set limits.
Ignore it, whatever the platform, and you run the risk of being the victim of social engineering, malware or other malicious attack.
While I don’t foresee a global smartphone pandemic in the immediate future, anything is possible in this amazing world we live in, and you do always need to be on your guard.
So – learn how to protect yourself, and do what you can to ensure your family and friends are computing/smartphoning/iPhoning safely, too, with awareness, ongoing education about security and, where appropriate, security software being the best defences against security threats that will never cease and only get cleverer!
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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