iPhone

Jailbreakme.com app is a boon to apple device users looking to break the shackles of Apple’s stringent sofware restrictions. Hacking a phone OS is usually done through  exploiting a weakness to get unsigned code onto a device.
If  the good folks could open up our phones for us than any other hacker, with nefarious intentions , could use that same exploit to mess with your phone. Think about it.

Security breaches in the iOS 4 have  been discovered, and it affects the iPhone, iPod Touch, as well as the iPad. The first exploit involves loading a malicious PDF document when visiting a specially created web page, and is so serious that it actually opens up your entire device’s control to the hacker behind the website.

French security firm Vupen Security wrote on its website “The first issue is caused by a memory corruption error when processing Compact Font Format (CFF) data within a PDF document, which could be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary code by tricking a user into visiting a specially crafted web page using Mobile Safari.
The second vulnerability is caused by an error in the kernel, which could allow attackers to gain elevated privileges and bypass sandbox restrictions.”

Apple  said that they are aware of the report and are investigating. The loop holes in Apple’s iOS is the latest in a series of security bugs identified in mobile devices over the past week. Security experts at a hacking conference last week pointed out several vulnerabilities in Google’s Android OS.

People will be extra careful about which PDFs they open , but with Safari’s seamless handling of PDFs, it wouldn’t be hard for some hacker to hide a potentially phone-invading PDF behind some harmless looking hyperlink. If you are looking for a  way to steer clear of PDFs. Cydia  has a PDF loading warner that lets you skip PDFs your browser is trying to load on a case by case basis.