Rotten Apple

Turns out there's a big security flaw in Apple's iOS (and has been for a long time now) that hackers could use to gain control of an iPhone or iPad.

The security flaw in Apple's iOS operating system came to light on Wednesday as the website www.jailbreakme.com released code that Apple customers can use to modify the iOS operating system through a process known as "jail breaking."

Some Apple customers choose to jail break their devices so they can download and run applications that are not approved by Apple or use iPhone phones on networks of carriers that are not approved by Apple.

Security experts warned that criminal hackers could download that code, reverse engineer it to identify a hole in iOS security and build a piece of malicious software within a few days.

"If you are a malicious attacker, it is fairly doable," said Patrik Runald, a senior researcher with the Internet security firm Websense.

Apple says they're going to fix it in a future release, but until then, who knows.  Android certainly has its share of security issues being an open system, but iOS is nowhere near bulletproof, either.  Both Google and Apple need to get to work, apparently.