The release of the iPhone in June was greeted with long lines, glowing reviews and the kind of fanfare generally more appropriate for a Harry Potter book than a touch-screen phone.At first few had negative remarks about the new device, except for grumbling about AT&T being the sole service provider, a problem remedied in August by 17-year-old George Hotz.
Now a security consulting firm co-founded by Hopkins Computer Science professor Avi Ruben, Independent Security Evaluators (ISE), has discovered a way to hack into the iPhone to retrieve information such as text messages or e-mails.
Hackers controlled iPhones through WiFi or a code from a forum or e-mail, and then subsequently inserting the said code. Using this code within the phone, Ruben and his coworkers were able to copy all of the text messages onto another platform. The week-long hack began after Ruben received his new iPhone and, as he held it in his hand, he began to wonder how secure it truly was.
"I guess it goes with the territory of my area of research," he said. He then challenged his coworkers to break the code and copy information that was supposed to remain secure.
The information regarding the hack and the solution to the security problem within the phone was then promptly turned over to Apple by Ruben's team.
The company is currently taking steps to prevent hacks in the future by releasing a patch that can be downloaded by users. However, though one specific weakness within the iPhone has been fixed, users may still not be safe.
"It is possible that there are other security issues," cautions Ruben.
This is hardly Ruben's first experience with technological security. Aside from his duties as a professor, he is also the director of the Information Security Institute at Hopkins and has authored several books on technological security.
He has also taken part in significant research involving election security and electronic voting machines, which is the subject of his newest book, Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting.
The issue of electronic voting has at various points in time placed Ruben on the national stage. He has been interviewed on CNN, NPR, was even featured on The Daily Show and has also testified before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission twice.
As a result of the headway made in this direction, Ruben was named a "Baltimorean of the Year" by Baltimore Magazine in 2004.
As a cofounder of ISE, where he works alongside several former students, Ruben provides technological assistance to keep individual companies secure. ISE designs secure systems and fixes systems riddled with holes and weaknesses. The ISE team is a diverse group of experts, all able to assist corporations in remaining secure.
Though Ruben's firm has succeeded in identifying and fixing one of the major weaknesses in the enormously popular iPhone, his work is far from completed. Holes still remain in several applications, and users are cautioned to visit only trusted sites.
Technological security is an ever-evolving field, and as Ruben's work in a variety of areas has shown, holes exist everywhere.
Ruben's daily steps forward may seem remote, but as his iPhone hack shows us, technological security is a crucial area that needs constant exploration.
