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iPhone vulnerable to Mac-hating viruses?

Anti-virus specialists are waiting to see just what it means to have a pocket-sized, mass market machine with OSX on it - and they say the update mechanism will be the interesting one.

The new iPhone runs the same OS - in a cut-down form - as the standard Mac computer. That means that if the new machine is any sort of success, it makes OSX a bigger target.

"It's soon soon to judge whether the iPhone is vulnerable," commented Graham Cluley, technology consultant at Sophos. "But the fact that it's a Mac definitely means that writers of malware are going to take an interest."

One point of possible vulnerability, Cluley said, would be software patches. "It looks like the device will not accept unsigned applications, but typically, phones are updated over the air. That will be one area where malware writers will try to get into the system."

He said it was hard to judge what impact the iPhone would have on the Mac malware scene. "It really does depend how many phones are sold," he said.