Blackhat has started and not surprisingly, there is quite a bit of information coming out of Las Vegas that relates to the iPhone. Lookout revealed some results from its App Genome project, which analyzed about 300,000 apps that are available for the iPhone and Android. Sometimes you get what you pay for and that may be true in the case of iPhone apps as well, in a rather negative way.
Lookout said that one third of free applications for the iPhone can potentially access a user’s location. 14% can access a user’s contacts and 23 of iPhone apps contain third party code. According to the company, new vulnerabilities will be unveiled at Blackhat, including mobile data leakage, which, however, seems to affect Android more than the iPhone.
Lookout noted that App developers need to “be more aware of best practices for accessing, transmitting and storing users’ personal data. In addition, consumers need to be aware of the permissions that mobile applications request and how that personal data is being used in the application.“
Sounds reasonable to us. Given its exposure, the iPhone has become a very attractive target platform for malicious intent. And boy, opening up the platform to all apps, whether they are App Store certified or not, may create an entirely different dimension of software threats.