Source: PC World The term security vulnerability make most people's hair stand on end, yet it was recently discovered in at least one case to be amusing. Researchers have managed to change the data of the location system of the iPhone to fool the device and thus to tell the owner that he was in a place radically different from where he actually was. For location purposes, the iPhone is not using a GPS chip. It uses a database maintained by the company Skyhook . The latter uses vehicles that pace up and down major cities and detect Wi-Fi networks and note their location. When seeking an iPhone's position, it will find Wi-Fi terminals around and interrogate the database to deduce its location. Scientists have managed to send to the iPhone a false SSID (network name) boundary, making it seem it was elsewhere. Note that you can do the same thing by logging onto the site Skyhook and saving your base Wi-Fi in another country ... You will understand the practical use of this vulnerability is virtually zero, especially since it would happen to be the owner of the device who is communicating the wrong information. This kind of thing is certainly much less likely to happen than to see the American military modify the information from the GPS network. [translation by jeremy]

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