Smartphones might have proved to be a tough nut to crack at last year’s CanSecWest Pwn2Own, but the same cannot be said for 2010 as two European hackers were able to gain control of a stock iPhone’s SMS database. The hack, which takes 20 seconds to execute by having the iPhone visit an infected website, allows its SMS messages — including those which had been deleted — to be uploaded to a predetermined server. If that’s not enough to make paranoid iPhone users soil their pants,...

Hackers taking part in a friendly competition aimed at highlighting OS and software vulnerabilities did some real damage to a variety of computer-based web browsers — including Safari, which took all of 10 seconds to bust on a MacBook — but where smartphones are concerned, the hackers were stumped. The competition took place at CanSecWest in Vancouver, Canada and big cash prizes were up for grabs. In fact, each successful execution of an attack on a smartphone was worth a cool $10,000. Apparently ...