While AT&T continues to have the lock on the iPhone® market in the US, there remains a large number of people who are interested in jailbreaking their phones. Some individuals are interested in running non Apple®-approved applications, while others may want to use their phone on another cellular network.
One technique used to jailbreak an iPhone can be done via the Safari browser and PDF vulnerability. What makes this of interest is that the same PDF exploit can also be used to exploit iPhone users in other ways. The real danger here is that the attacker does not need physical access to the iPhone. All that is required is the ability to get the iPhone user to visit a vulnerable website.
While Apple® will most likely fix this vulnerability quickly, jailbroken devices will remain vulnerable in the meantime. Users of jailbroken devices can download a work-around on the Cydia store website that will warn users when a vulnerable Mobile Safari® page is loading a PDF file. This at least offers some protection.
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