Originally posted to Full-disclosure by Max Moser.
Hi there, just in case you didn't see the post at my blog
http://remote-exploit.blogspot.com/ here is a small summit of the
problem:
The iPhone running OS 3 has a stupid usability feature. It seems like
the iPhone is automatically opening a browser when joining a network.
When joining a network, the iPhone tries to do the following:
1. DNS queries for www.apple.com
2. Opening http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html
When both are successful, then fine... the phone gets back "success"
and everything is ok.
When both are failing... that's fine as well because then the phone
assumes that the Internet connection is not up and running.
If the phone can successfully query the name but get back any
different content than "Success"
it assumes that there is a captive portal which requires you to
authenticate first to get access to the Internet. (Hotels, Hotspots
etc)
It seems like Apple was thinking.. damn that's annoying for the
user... lets open up
Safari automatically if this special case comes into place :-)
Usability kills security .... together with karmetasploit its a very
evil thing. Get IPhone cookies, accounts and maybe even
system control... depending on the bugs you have left to test.
You can see the whole thing as a video @ vimeo
http://www.vimeo.com/5466236 .... now lets find some new safari bugs
:-)
Greetings
Max