Iphone Malware

First the good news about iPhone malware - it is rare on non jail broken iPhones. The reason for this is Apple's tightly controlled app marketplace. Apps are released on the marketplace only after scanning. While we may protest against Apple's tight control over the apps which are distributed, this tight control has definitely helped iPhone security.

However vulnerabilities exist and have always existed in iPhones and iPads. For example, recently there was a PDF vulnerability that was subsequently patched by Apple. Even earlier, there was a buffer flow vulnerability that allowed your iPhone or be controlled remotely. This too was patched by Apple.

The greatest threat to iPhone is if existing vulnerabilities can be used to jailbreak the device and infect it with malware. If a vulnerability allows hackers to do this remotely, it will be a disaster.

Luckily for iPhone users and unluckily for users with an Android based smartphone, Android is much more vulnerable to malware. Taken together with Android's growing market share, Android represents the low hanging fruit for hackers.

iPhone Security Steps

The biggest steps to take to ensure that your iPhone is secure is to ensure that your iPhone is physically secure at all times. If you lose physical possession of your iPhone, it can be jail broken and all kinds of spyware and malware be installed on it.

Do not jail break your iPhone and install third party apps on it unless for some reason you absolutely have to.

Minimize the number of apps that you have installed on your iPhone. This will minimize possible misuse of these apps.

Check the apps that you have installed on the system for possible misuse. Even legal apps on a non jail broken iPhone can be misused. For example a cell phone tracker can be used to spy on your location.

You can install scanning software from Intego. However this scanning software only scans limited amount of data. It is barred from from scanning iPhone's file system by the app sandbox in which it runs. It can only scan email attachments and files on remote servers.