Details on the iPhone 3G release in Belgium and some security news

Wednesday

Well, not just the 3G model but this will be the first time that the iPhone will be officially available in Belgium. More then a year after the release of the first iPhone. Just crazy.
After a cancelled press release on the 4th of July, today we finally got the news. The iPhone 3G will be released in limited number on the 11th of July in several Mobistar shops from 10:00 on. The iPhone will be sold unlocked and simlock free for 525€ for the 8GB model and 615€ for the 16GB model without subscription. Mobistar did provide some special subscriptions for the iPhone but taking one will not get you any discount. More craziness?

People who were hoping to get an iPhone 3G for 200€ or less will be very disappointed.

Belgian Minister Van Quickenborne claimed this high prize was due to the Belgian law who prohibites to sell any bundle of items that cannot be sold seperately (koppelverkoop). (Source: Zdnet.be)

So, that was it for the non-security part. Let's discuss some security. The phenomenon of the iPhone and it's launch is an excellent tactic for phishing. A spammail is circulating that links to a copy of the Apple Store, advertising the sale of the iPhone 3G. More details on the Trendmicro blog here. So beware of any unsollicited email as always.

Also the current users of iPhone and iPod Touch are at risk since Apple seems to be providing a lot of security patches for Mac OS X but isn't pushing these to the iPhone. Since the iPhone uses a stripped down version of Mac OS and the Safary browser, this poses a real problem. Version 1.1.4 still seems to be the most recent version. On top of that, there even seems to be a zero day exploit circulating for the iPhone. You can read the details over at the Zero Day blog.

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