Is BlackBerry better than iphone?

By STEFAN NAIDU

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA: When it comes to mobile security — specifically hacker prevention — Apple’s iPhone lags behind the BlackBerry, said Sheran Gunasekera who is head of R&D for ZenConsult.

Gunasekera, who specialises in mobile and web application security, was assessing the mobile vulnerabilities of the two smartphones, The Star Online report said.

Quoting a study by SecurityFocus, a website on information security, “The research shows that the BlackBerry is significantly more secure than the iPhone,” he said.

“The iPhone has 39 points of vulnerability while the BlackBerry has only two.”

According to him, no device can be made totally secure all the time. He said someone will always find a way to hack into it. “The question is how difficult will it be to hack into,” he added.

He was full of praise for the latest series of BlackBerry devices.

“Short of directly installing malicious software onto the BlackBerry or convincing the user to download a fake software-patch, there is no way to infiltrate it,” said Gunasekera.

He said the BlackBerry appears to have no weaknesses that can be exploited by a hacker. “Even the sending and receiving of data packets (via the device) is well encrypted,” he added.

Gunasekera was speaking at the HITBSecConf 2009 security conference here which ends tomorrow.

(Source: The Star Online)