References to data logging software Carrier IQ have been found on Apples iOS

iphone 4s 520x245 References to data logging software Carrier IQ have been found on Apples iOS

Software developer Trevor Eckhart discovered a secret data logging app on Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones that logs the users keystrokes and dispatches them off to Carrier IQs servers, as Wired reported on Tuesday. References to the spy software have now been found hidden in all versions of iOS as well, according to a report by The Verge.

Carrier IQ, as Eckhart demonstrates in the video below, secretly records the numbers a user calls, their text messages, the content of Web searches (including encrypted ones) and a whole mess of other data. It then sends this data off to Carrier IQs servers, even if the phone itself is in airplane mode and connected to the Internet over WiFi.

Eckhart labeled the tracking software as a rootkit, an application that gains (or has been given) root access to a system without permission from the user, which led Carrier IQ to threaten him with legal action. The company later backed off when the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) came to Eckharts aid.

Given Apples much more closed ecosystem and tighter control over both the hardware and software of its phones, and its famed refusal to let the carriers dictate what comes preinstalled on an iPhone, it had seemed unlikely that its operating s! ystem wo uld have any traces of Carrier IQs software, but that has turned out to not be the case.

iPhone jailbreak developerGrant Paul (@chpwn)tweeted todaythathed found references to Carrier IQ in versions of iOS as recent as 3.1.Intell onMacRumors Forumsthen found similar references in iOS v4.0 and up, and Paul himself later tweeted that Carrier IQ was included in iOS 5 as well, but under the name of awd_ice#.

It is not entirely clear right now if the software is enabled by default or not and how much data it tracks, if any, and if it then sends that over to remote servers. Paul did find that the carrier, phone number and location data appeared to be used by the tracker, but he says that it may only go into action when diagnostic logging is enabled on the phone (which it isnt by default).

It is definitely not clear right now exactly how much data the Carrier IQ software is gathering on Apples iOS and whether it is then sending it over to the companys servers, like it does on the other phones mentioned above. We do not have any official word from Apple yet, so well just have to wait and see how it all plays out.


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