Agape Blog

In the past week i had presented the top 10 security threats for the year 2008. Below i am mentioning a detailed report on those threats and the issues related to them. This report has been made by our Fraud Management expert: Mr. Prabhat Tiwari.

Cellebrite - the industry leader in mobile phone content transfer and backup solutions, recently announced native support for iPhone. The universally popular iPhone will now be compatible with Cellebrite’s UME-36 synchronization device. Native iPhone support represents user interface breakthrough, allowing users to transfer customer’s phonebook, from phone to phone, over a direct cabled connection, without requiring a PC or additional software.

The portable, stand-alone UME-36 device connects directly to an iPhone using a USB cable, requiring no PC for use, and supports more than 1500 past and current cellular phones. Over 50,000 Cellebrite UME-36 devices are currently used exclusively by all major carriers in the world including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, Nokia, Vodafone, T-Mobile, US Cellular and more.

This new feature will definitely help forensic investigators to fasten their process and provide effiicent results, specially for the newly released iPhone.

There have been lot of cases recently, where either an individual or an organization had to suffer huge losses due to some security lapses. Internet security has become extremely important, which requires identification of the possible threats and combating them. We have presented the top 10 security threats below in our endeavor to create awareness about the threats, so that everyone can avoid them to prevent occurrence of loss.

Recently, Jonathan Zdziarski presented an O’Reilly webcast iPhone Forensics: Bypassing the iPhone passcode which demonstrated steps that can be used by law enforcement to bypass the iPhone 3G’s passcode lock by creating a custom firmware bundle. During the webcast Zdziarski explained how the iPhone keeps a snapshot image of your most recent action. He also stated that it could take as little as 60 seconds to break the iPhone’s security. Some of the other methods include taking data from the iPhone’s keyboard cache, Safari cache, Google Maps lookups and so on. Experts and hackers can also recover deleted photos or e-mails from months ago.”

Zdziarski has been a longtime mobile hacker who has played a key role in opening the iPhone’s environment. He has written books on iPhone development and forensics for O’Reilly. He would be organising a 2 day forensic workshop from tomorrow.

Considering these loopholes in iPhone, no one would like to spend on a device that does not promise robust security. Not that everyone has got anything to hide, but there are some things that everyone wants to remain private - always.

Apple’s iPhone is quickly becoming the world’s #1 mobile device, being increasingly used in business, personal activities, and ofcourse crime. To educate professionals on how to recover data from the iPhone - O’Reilly is hosting a Forensics workshop in Boston.

The speaker at the workshop will be Jonathan Zdziarski, original iPhone hacker and author of iPhone Forensics. This two-day workshop will guide you, hands on, through forensic examination of an iPhone and iPhone 3G. It will teach methods for recovering evidence, personal data and corporate assets from the iPhone.

The workshop will attract many security experts and law enforcement officials interested in recovering information from the iPhone. Also, students will learn about what kinds of evidence are stored on the devices and how to do prepare for a forensics investigation.

Date of Workshop - September 16-17, 2008

Venue - Burlington Marriot, Burlington, Massachusetts.