After news broke last week of a significant flaw in the way the iPhone handles SMS messages, Apple has now responded to SMS security concerns, noting that their iMessage platform is far more secure, and that the SMS system itself is flawed.
Apple released the following statement to The Loop:
Apple takes security very seriously. When using iMessage instead of SMS, addresses are verified which protects against these kinds of spoofing attacks. One of the limitations of SMS is that it allows messages to be sent with spoofed addresses to any phone, so we urge customers to be extremely careful if they’re directed to an unknown website or address over SMS.
As The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple rightly points out, SMS spoofing is not a problem with the iPhone. Any phone that uses SMS is vulnerable to this sort of attack. iMessage is far more secure than SMS by its very nature.
Now, if only iMessage was available on all smartphones…
