Spam News

Apple fail? Anti-phishing feature for iPhone 'doesn't work'

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Apple on Wednesday released the latest iPods and also put out new versions of the mobile operating systems for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The iPhone OS 3.1 contains an anti-phishing feature, but it doesn't work, according to the Mac Security blog.

The blog reported that the anti-fraud feature "simply does not seem to work," having tested it with multiple web addresses from sites that seek to steal users' sensitive information, called phishing.

"Similar to that used by the desktop Safari, this feature should warn users that they may be visiting a known malicious website," Mac Security blog reported. "However, we have extensively tested this feature, tossing dozens of phishing URLs at it, and it simply does not seem to work."

URLs that are blocked by Safari in Mac OS X open and direct users to malicious pages on the iPhone browser, according to the blog.

Security expert Michael Sutton, VP of security research at Zscaler, said the Mac OS X Safari browser uses Google's safe browsing feature to guard against phishing sites, but the iPhone version only detects malware targeted specifically at the iPhone, according to SCmagazineUK.com.

"Surely I can be phished on the iPhone just as I can fall victim browsing the web on my laptop," Sutton said, according to the website.