• Forbes, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 2:38 PM

Proponents of the portable Web might be unnerved to learn that their shining light, the Apple iPhone, is buggier than the underside of a forest rock. Several respected cyber-security researchers tell Forbes they've found in a flaw in the iPhone's handling of text messages, which they can use to send a series of mostly invisible SMS bursts that can give a hacker complete power over any of the smart phone's functions.

That includes dialing the phone, visiting Web sites, turning on the device's camera and microphone and, most importantly, sending more text messages to further propagate a mass-gadget hijacking. The iPhone SMS bug -- which the research brought to Apple's attention, but to no avail -- is just one of a series hey plan to reveal Thursday at the Black Hat cyber-security conference in Las Vegas.

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