Clearly yours is an intellect I am unable to fathom not_alice.
You have provided no proof or even theory as to how someone could compromise the OP’s iPhone when all they have access to are his postings on SDMB. You can pretend all day long that you have given full answers but you haven’t even scratched the surface. Sure no device is 100% secure, the iPhone is not some holy grail of a device that cannot be touched but given the information available to the attacker there is no way I can see and no way you have mentioned to install ANYTHING on the phone remotely. Sure if you had physical access to the iPhone you could jailbreak it, install an app to ping addresses around its own until it hit something but the simple fact is you don’t.
I would be a very happy man if you would answer me one simple question. Your reply is not allowed to be ‘google it’ or ‘I already told you’ or anything else as useless. Pretend you are in a written exam and answering this question will reward you with money, women/men and all you heart desires.
Q. Given the information available to you (a SDMB username) how would you go about installing un-approved software on that persons iPhone?
I most certainly have. I willl outline it for you one more time, and that is all:
the iphone and the pc are on the same inside network behind a router.
the iphone (and maybe the pc) can communicate with the outside world
the iphone and the pc can communicate with each other on the inside network
hence the iphone is a bridge between the outside world and the entire inside network, lets say for now that is just the pc (and the router).
The literature is full of reasons to not allow that to happen, and precisely why and what the risks are.
Your seem to accept all the bullet points above, but somehow think that there is something special and magical about iphones, that they can communicate as I described, but somehow can’t.
If they can (and in fact they can), then they are a bridge, and bridges are well known security risks.
If they can’t communicate as I described, then you show me the evidence that an iphone on a wifi network can not act as a bridge as I described.
What the specific attack will be is impossible to say, because the OP’s request is general.
But the answer is pretty much no different than if OP asked if one pc could be used to attack another, or a mac could act as a bridge for a pc, or an iphone could attacj an android phone on the same network.
The principle is the same, and it is basic network security 101.
Look it up. google is your friend.
You asked me for the outline, which I was reluctant to give, because I didn’t want to waste this kind of time on a newbie.
Correct.
That is a long way from “is it possible”, which is the OP’s question, right?
Who said I have to force an install of anything? maybe it is already there, maybe I sit and wait forever to see if something gets installed, maybe I social engineer something like a cool game, who knows. These are all standard malware approaches, and there are a zillion more out there. The iphone is not immune from any of it, as long as it can act as a bridge.
Sure if you had
I don’t need physical access to get a phone to install an app, wtf? Why is that different than a pc in any way? People install malware all the time on PCs that muck around on the internal network while presumably doing something fun or useful, how would you really know an app on the iphone is not doing that behind the scenes?
I don’t agree to that, because you asked me at first for theory only, and I took your word on good faith, and now it seems like you want me to recapitulate the entire world of network hacking for you, when you could simply look it all up yourself without involving me.
Even if Iwanted to go further, you are not inspiring confidence that you would be a good student since you seem to have yet googled to confirm anything I am saying, or ask about anything else you may have googled.
What are you, 14 years old?
What you don’t understand is I don’t have to do that to get to the PC. I am not going though it again. Re-read the thread 1000 times if that is what it takes. google to supplement what you don’t understand if you think it will help.
Anyway, neither of those were limits placed by the OP, so why should they matter now?
Wow, that’s a pretty lengthy post that skillfully avoids answering the question I asked.
I know PCs can attack other PCs, I know malware can be installed remotely on a PC, but we aren’t talking about PCs here. We are talking about using the iPhone as a means of attacking the PC.
I know you don’t, you can just attack the PC directly, but the OP specifies that the attack should take place over the iphone which leaves you in the situation where you need to install an un-approved app onto the iphone remotely, something which is not possible unless you can show otherwise.
You read the OP right? The only information we have is the OP’s username (and the content of his posts/profile) and we have to attack his PC using his iphone. Therefore you need to compromise his iphone in some way, how do you do this remotely?
I have tried to ask you simple straightforward questions, all of which you have failed miserably to answer which I am forced to assume is because you can’t answer them.
not_alice, if you are going to continue to participate in this thread you are going to have to start providing specific factual support for your assertions. And you are also going to drop the snark, now.
If you are asking for details beyond the theory now, perhaps you should tstart a new thread and see if anyone else joined in. I answered your original question repeatedly, just because you either don’t like or don’t understand it does not mean I gave you an incorrect answer.
Duh.
What you don’t seem to grasp is I don’t have to simply say “I want to install an app on iphone with phone # 555-555-5555 or ip address 55.55.55.55” and the4n go out and do it in order for malware to be installed. Work that around in your mind awhile, once you grasp that (I have already given you the framework several times), then it will all be clear.
I have already told you this several times. read the thread as many times aas necessary, confirm what I have said against the literature. If you find anything that is in fact not correct, as opposed to something you jsut don’t get, let me know! But first, make sure you get the vector of the attack in the first place. Right now, my sense is you don’t get that, so of course you don’t get the implications.
You continue to show that you don’t know the first thing about networking, because this is really trivial stuff, and you have not shown any of it not correct or possible. All you are saying is, at best, you don’t understand, but you won’t go and google to confirm what I am saying.
Too bad for you I guess should your phone ever have malware that uses it as a bridge to steal important info from your PC. I don’t wish that on anyone, but don’t pretend it is not possible.
And don’t read so many limitations into the OP. If the OP’s poster wants to narrow it down further, than fine, but for now, my answer applies to the OP, not your imagined limitations.
The answer to the OP is yes, at least one such method is as I described.
Sorry if you don’t understand, but that is the answer, and that is all you will get here from me absent any demonstration of new insight by you (and maybe not even then, since, well, see your post #9)
What do you suggest about my description of using the phone as a bridge on the internal network is not factual or is incorrect or infeasible? I have asked mittu pretty much the same thing, and gotten nothing substantial in return, but I am open to a substantial discussion.
And why am I obligated to go further into it with a poster, not the OP, who specifically asked only for theory, not details (see post #9) and then moved the goalposts?
I am not the one making assertions, I am describing networking security 101. If any assertions are being made, it is by others who seem to think that iphones and generic network attack techniques are incompatible even though s/he does not claim that, once on the network, the iphone has any specific security in place to prevent what I am saying could happen from happening?
Your posts combine into one almighty abject failure to explain how it is possible remotely install software onto an iphone. Until you are able to demonstrate this the answer to the OP is no, you cannot attack a PC via their iphone without jailbreaking the iphone and installing un-approved apps onto it.
Sure the iphone can act as a bridge, no question about it. The trouble is that it won’t act as a bridge in the manner you require it to without installing extra software. Extra software that would never be approved by Apple and which you could not force the OP to install on his/her phone even if it did exist. The only way to get the phone to function in this manner is to jailbreak it, something which can’t be done remotely. Hence it is not possible to attack a person’s PC via their iphone from thousands of miles away.
Ugh - this got through before my unsubscribe, so I will be honest and try to answer.
What is it exactly that you think Apple can do to prevent this? If they can’t prevent the software from causing the phone to act as a bridge, then how are they going to limit it further from how it communicates with other devices on the network when it does?
Maybe this is the heart of the issue here. Do you think that TCP/IP packets from the iphone to the pc are going to scream “hack hack hack” and the iphone has a detector for that?
Not as far as I know is Apple going to be able to detect or prevent an attack on some other device simply by watching packets go by.
That is the job of one or more firewalls or other packet-inspecting software on the network (or the PC).
Note the OP does not specifically indicate anything about the configuration of the network itself (firewall, etc.) or the PC (firewall, virus blockers, etc.).
UNLESS Apple can specifically interpret the packets’ intent and block them accordingly, then the iphone can do anything any other device on the network can do.
Just as malware on a pc can probe other pcs on the network form inside the firewall (meaning the firewall is useless for these purposes), an iphone can do the same. Can send the very same sequence of packets directly to a PC.
Since windows (AFIK, I don’t really use it anymore) is not capable of detecting effectively such attacks (there is a very large market for 3rd party tools in this area, and even they are continually updated), I doubt Apple is doing the same with the iphone. Maybe, since I don’t have an iphone, but I never heard of such a thing.
Maybe there are 3rd party apps for that on a phone too, but that also was not specified in the OP.
Generally malware does not need to be forced onto a device. You simply hide it something actually useful or fun, and someone installs it and runs it, and actually gets some beneficial use out of it.
It is rare malware indeed that simply advertises “I am trouble, but install me anyway” and actually gets installed
Not true. Just get something useful or fun into apple’s store that can act as a bridge, and persuade someone to install and run it. If apple allows programs/apps to act as a bridge, that will do the trick. I suppose they can possibly prevent that, but I don’t think they do. If they allow it, I am having a hard time understanding how they would prevent an attack from the iphone end.
I don’t even get why they would even try to be frank. it seems to me it is the role of a device to monitor incoming packets to protect itself, not monitor outgoing packets (which could be encrypted anyway) to protect every other possible device it may be communicating with.
“Hence” is a big word. But the suppositions of your explanation are not true, or at least not sufficient, as I hope is a little clearer now.
I’m wondering if the OP is in fact concerned about the iPhone in particular, (as opposed to other devices on the home wireless network). Or any smart phone, for that matter. In other words, is the question about the security of iPhones specifically? If so, then the fact that it’s networked at home is a different issue, isn’t it?
But suppose there is no intentional communication whatsoever between the phone and the computer over the home network. Is the OP wondering, then, if a hacker can recognize the computer through the iPhone, and then get to it despite this? Or perhaps that it might be easier to get to the computer through the phone, if the computer has all kind of security?
Before any app is available to be installed on the iphone it needs to be reviewed by Apple, during the review process they monitor what kind of information the app is sending and receiving. Apple aren’t going to approve an app that scans the local network for machines.
So, Apple can prevent the phone from functioning as a bridge, and they do prevent it from functioning in this manner. Which is why you have never heard of an iphone being used to hack/monitor/scan anything.
I totally agree with the assertion that the phone is a bridge between the Internet and the protected local network. This is one of the reasons employers hesitate to allow iPhones and other devices to attach to wi-fi access points.
I have a couple of cool little apps on my iPhone that do things like find local hosts and ping ranges of IP addresses. It’s kind of fun to list local hosts on a public wifi net such as at an airport. You see all kinds of odd names (“Joe Smith’s Macintosh” or “Mi Manzana”) and you can wonder which of the weary travelers is “Joe Smith”.
So much of network security is built upon the trust in things within the firewall and distrust of things not within the firewall that the risk is clear.
And I have no confidence whatsoever that Apple is able to check apps for nastiness. Sure, they can check for certain API calls, but it is trivial for a developer to bury stuff in an app that even colleagues in code review might not spot. There are enough apps with legit uses of network stuff (like those two I mentioned above) that the API calls themselves would not raise suspicion.
My disconnect is this: If doper Joe is mad at doper Jim and wants to hack Jim’s PC over an iPhone, it sounds like a tall order. How, without clever social engineering, does doper Joe get doper Jim to have the malware on his phone?
It sounds much more probable for Joe to hack some random person’s network after discovering a vulnerability in their specific iPhone.
If it were possible to do this on most iPhones via an existing security hole in Apple’s software or in a very common app, then this would be a horrible security hole that would be exploited all over the place and talked about.
Since my Treo days I have feared true malware on the phone. They can make the phone dial up some 900 number based in Nigeria that charges $1000/minute. Lots of nastiness that can be done on someone’s phone.
Snap does precisely this. Network Ping does similar things such as ping a range of IP addresses.
There are legit reasons for having both of these apps. I use them both when I am at a small school where I do light network management.
There are loads of cool apps for network administrators. I can log in to one of the machines at the school using an SSH session over VPN and do all kinds of Linux stuff until my thumbs get tired.
It does not matter if the OP asked about a phone and a pc, or 2 pcs, or a mac and a pc.
What matters, is there are two devices inside the firewall that can talk directly to each other. That is the premise of the OP.
They can talk directly to each other, that means the iPhone can send whatever it wants to the PC that exploit whatever known weaknesses of the PC are.
These security holes vary day by day, but this is basically what happens all the time on any network, and it is the work of the router/firewall and anti-malware programs to block them.
Because of the way the typical network and firewall are set up, they are pretty much out of consideration when both devices (phone and PC) are on the same home network as the OP described.
That means it is up to the anti-malware software to block anything malicious from the iPhone, and we all know that isn’t a perfect approach.
So then the question is, how can dangerous software get on the phone in the first place?
Mittu suggests that Apple somehow can tell if a program has mal intent, but as a computer scientist, I assure you that is not true. There is no way on Earth that an iPhone can tell if outbound packets are precisely what PC anti-malware would block. The anti-malware itself is not even perfect at that, even if updated daily. So how can a phone do it?
So then I claimed, given that Apple can’t really block such packets, that kind of functionality could be buried in an app that is either fun or some sort of useful utility.
Then minor7flat5 gave a couple of examples, in particular an ssh program.
I am not going to give the details of how to proceed, because that would potentially be against board rules. But the basic point is, apple has in its app store already a utility that can talk to both an outside server and the pc without any hindrance at all. That is what I meant by a bridge.
How do you know any app is not doing exactly that while it gives you traffic or plays a video or whatever? You probably don’t, but it is possible to know. Not without a trusted listener on the home network though, something other than the router, the pc, or the iphone, if you want to be really certain.
BTW, this would be infinitely more problematical if the iphone is using wifi for the home network, but also communicating with the outside world via the phone network, because the listening to the phone network seems trickier because it is not an open standard like wifi.
I don’t know if iPhones can use both networks simultaneously, or if so, if they can prevent 2 or more apps from sharing information amongst themselves to bridge the two networks for all intents and purposes. Maybe they can, maybe they can’t. But if they can’t prevent that, it is a HUGE security risk when using wifi.
This is true for other phones and operating systems too, nothing Apple specific about it all.
