iPhone x86

For you who are not familiar with computer terms, like that "x86" in the title of this post; it means or more precisely points to Intel's most commercially successful instruction set of architecture for micro-processor, in the history of personal computing.

I won't bore you with the whole meaning & history, so if you wish to know more; you can read the whole info at this Wikipedia link. ;-p

As we know it, again for you who are following the processor trend & rumors, Intel has been cooking up Moorestown for quite some time now. Moorestown is a chip package designed for smart phones and other handheld computers. The heart of the package is an upcoming version of Intel's Atom's processor, an inexpensive low-power x86 processor.

Now, we understand Apple is already using ARM processor to power up its iPhone. And by seeing the mutual benefits that Apple and Intel have been sharing together by putting Core 2 Duo processors into MacBook laptops, we can only assume that Intel somehow will push its Moorestown processor into iPhone too.

But putting Intel's Moorestown chip package inside a future version of the iPhone would make the smart phone less secure, according to Dino Dai Zovi, an independent security researcher, in an interview at the Hack In The Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: "That will make the iPhone x86 and that will make a lot of attacks easier."

"The iPhone uses the Arm processor and most people are not familiar with it," Dai Zovi said, noting that x86 processors are familiar territory for malware writers and hackers looking for vulnerabilities; as reported by PCW Business Center.

Further more, Dai Zovi pry open iPhone's security vulnerabilities: "The iPhone is significantly less secure than the desktop version of OS X." The iPhone runs a slimmed-down version of MacOS X, where as a result; some of the security features that are included in the desktop version of MacOS X are not included in the phone version.

[blogged with my Treo 750v]