This week the firm Intrepidus Group managed to deliver Palm a swift kick in the coconuts. As a result of performing some due diligence work for an unnamed customer they discovered that the Palm WebOS had as many holes as a screen door.
From CNBC:
The firm’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Aaron Higbee tells me he was “shocked” when he discovered how easily it was to hack Palm’s WebOS, believing the company rushed its operating system to market at the expense of addressing fundamental security issues. “There is a problem with the architecture,” says Higbee, who says the original security issues discovered have been addressed and resolved by Palm, but that once his firm’s methodology is published, “researchers will re-apply our methods. Palm and WebOS vendors are gonna have a slew of problems disclosed to them.”
The problems may have been fixed but, this still presents a significant wrinkle as Palm moves to position itself to be bought up by potential suitors.
Cost to develop a linux based mobile web platform. $600 million.
Forgetting to put any security controls in. Priceless.
(Imaged used under CC from tantrum dan)
