Meanwhile, they have already demonstrated this flaw in action to CNET‘s Elinor Mills before the conference.

Here’s what happened: While I was talking on the phone to Charlie Miller, his partner, Collin Mulliner, sent me a text message from his phone. One minute I’m talking to Miller and the next minute my phone is dead, and this time it’s not AT&T’s fault. After a few seconds it came back to life, but I was not able to make or receive calls until I rebooted.

The attack is enabled by a serious memory corruption bug in the way the iPhone handles SMS messages, said Miller, a senior security researcher at Independent Security Evaluators. There is no patch, despite the fact that Apple was notified of the problem about six weeks ago, he said.

[via CNET]