Get your tinfoil hats out, boys, your smartphone may be logging your every move:
Blogger and iPhone hacker Chpwn believes that the controversial Carrier IQ software isn’t confined to Android devices.
In this blog post, he says a look at the
/usr/binfolder reveals Carrier IQ’s agent software, identified as IQAgent in iOS 3, and either awd_ice2 or awd_ice3 on iOS 4 or iOS 5 devices.At this point, Chpwn believes the daemon does not have access to the UI layer, which means it may not be able to capture the kind of data exposed in Android devices.
While Chpwn states that he is not certain the software is launched except when the phone is in diagnostic mode, the discovery is certain to add further momentum to the fury mounting at Carrier IQ’s surreptitious installation on consumer devices.
Update: Lifehacker offers the instructions on turning off the Carrier IQ component on your iPhone:
Hacker Chpwn discovered Carrier IQ after this week’s uproar, and while we still aren’t positive what it can track and send, he’s fairly certain it doesn’t include a keylogger like the Android version. So far it can log your phone number, your carrier, your active phone calls, and your location, though it’s unclear as to what it’s actually sending back to Apple. Luckily, there’s an easy way to turn it off. Just head to Settings > General > About > Diagnostics and Usage, and tap “Don’t Send”. That’s it! We’ve also updated our original post on Carrier IQ to include this new information.
Update, the second: Daniel Bader posts that two of the major Canadian mobile operators stated that Carrier IQ is not on the devices they sell:
Rogers has done an investigation and has confirmed that Carrier IQ is not present on any of its devices. On Twitter they stated that “Hi all. I’m happy to confirm that we have investigated and Carrier IQ is NOT on any of our devices”. TELUS also confirmed that they have not installed Carrier IQ on any of their devices. We are waiting to hear back from Bell.
