Apple will soon patch iPhone OS flaws

Although there is no word about actual attacks happening, Apple has decided to patch the flawed iPhone OS 4 that allows hackers to remotely take control of the devices – iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch – running this operating system. Apple is working on security fixes for both critical security issues found in the operating system.

One of the two serious security glitches allow an arbitrary piece of code to be executed when opening a PDF document using Apple’s Safari web browser. The code gets into a protective sandbox, and here comes the other serious security hole that allows this code to get out of the sandbox and start accessing your data.

These flaws are considered pretty serious by many – a German government agency, the Federal Office for Information Security has even issued a warning about it, considering the popularity of the devices running this operating system. All users of iPhones using iOS versions 3.1.2-4.0.1., iPads using iOS 3.2-3.2.1 and iPods Touch using iOS 3.1.2.-4.0 are affected.

Luckily there were no attacks reported that would have exploited these two security flaws in the iPhone OS, but this does not mean that such attacks will not happen. Apple has already started to work on fixes for these problems, and a patch or an update will appear soon. Until then iPod, iPad and iPhone users should not open any PDF documents from unverified and untrusted sources in order to avoid being hacked.