When Apple introduced iPhone OS 3.0, it attempted to beef up the security of over-the-air enterprise management of iPhones by adding support for Cisco Systems' Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP). However, a flaw in the implementation of the standard could allow hackers to offer mobile configuration files that appear to be from a legitimate source, but may otherwise set your iPhone to access malicious servers.

Ars spoke with a mobile security expert who discovered the problem (who asked to remain anonymous because he did not have approval to talk about the issue). He told Ars that the issue is one of trust: "Who would you trust to change your iPhone configuration over the air? Your carrier? Your company? Your IT security admin?" he asked. Apple uses SCEP as a way for the iPhone to check in with a certificate server to verify that a mobileconfig file has been signed by a trusted source, but flaws in the set-up on the iPhone mean that the process doesn't always work as intended.