Australian students hack iPhones

3:30 am | Mobile | No comment

Hi-tech mobile phones becoming more like of a personal computer is now turning out to be the target of hacking. They are more susceptible to the usual computer threats and bugs.

Kaspersky Lab, a Russian antivirus company stated that a new malicious program stole money from Nokia phones by making small charge rates from owners’ wireless accounts.

An Australian student produced an experimental worm last month that hopscotched across iPhones. The harmful worm did not affect any damage but security experts say that you can’t set aside the possibility of pernicious attacks on iPhones.

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times: The co-founders of a cellphone security company, Lookout: Kevin Mahaffey, left, James Burgess, center, and John Hering.

A well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures, invested into a fresh security start-up called Lookout. Based in San Francisco, it was a consulting firm before called Flexilis managed by the fresh graduates of the University of Southern California. Seeking to be the leader in security of the mobile world like what Symantec does in the PC market.

Lookout started to experiment security software for phones and will immediately launch security applications for Blackberry and iPhone. It will protect the phones from malicious programs and will provide the owners the capacity to remotely back up, delete data on their phones and allows them to trace the location of their phones on the Web.