IPhone Can Take Screenshots of Anything You Do

snowdrift · Jul 26, 2009

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/09/hacker-says-sec/

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If you’ve got an iPhone, pretty much everything you have done on your handset has been temporarily stored as a screenshot that hackers or forensics experts could eventually recover, according to a renowned iPhone hacker...
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123 Privacy · Aug 13, 2009

...iPhone hacker and data-forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski explained that the popular handset snaps a screenshot of your most recent action — regardless of whether it’s sending a text message, e-mailing or browsing a web page — in order to cache it. This is purely for aesthetic purposes: When an iPhone user taps the Home button, the window of the application you have open shrinks and disappears. In order to create that shrinking effect, the iPhone snaps a screenshot, Zdziarski said.

The phone presumably deletes the image after you close the application. But anyone who understands data is aware that in most cases, deletion does not permanently remove files from a storage device. Therefore, forensics experts have used this security flaw to gather evidence against criminals convicted of rape, murder or drug deals, Zdziarski said.

"There’s no way to prevent it," Zdziarski said during the webcast.
"I’m kind of divided on it. I hope Apple fixes it because it’s a significant privacy leak, but at the same time it’s been useful for investigating criminals."

And though the handset only snaps screenshots when users press the Home button, Zdziarski said this is only one way forensics experts collect evidence. Other methods include taking data from the iPhone’s keyboard cache, Safari cache, Google Maps lookups and so on. Experts and hackers can also recover deleted photos or e-mails from months ago.
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I expect this to be patched in the near future. It's a little overblown but every public denouncement of something clearly privacy invasive is a good thing.

As an aside, I am highly interested if anyone has done a security/code review of Google's Android phone O/S yet.

Now that would be interesting.

TonyW · Aug 14, 2009

BBC News reported yesterday that Palm have been criticised over privacy concerns on their recently released Pre:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8198921.stm

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