Apple

As reported by Forbes and others, security researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner plan to demonstrate today, at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, how hackers can take over iPhones by sending them specially-crafted SMSs. Hackers that take over phones in this manner can do things including, “dialing the phone, visiting Web sites, turning on the device’s camera and microphone and, most importantly, sending more text messages to further propagate a mass-gadget hijacking.”

We initially reported this bug four weeks ago, and Miller informed Apple of the vulnerability, giving the company plenty of time to issue a fix. Yet nothing has come from Cupertino since then, and we’re all wondering if Apple will be able to release a security update before this exploit gets into the wild.

Of course, if it does, and the security researchers are the cause of such an attack being used, that would raise questions of just how much information they should make public. We have seen in the past that, following Apple’s delay in releasing security updates, researchers have gone public with exploits, but this one seems like it could have serious effects if it spreads.