The demonstration was from Mr. Charlie Miller, a former NSA analyst that used to love to hack away at Apple’s defenses until Apple terminated his developer account for showing them a bug in Mobile Safari. The details are pretty simple. Miller reported the bug, Apple ignored it, and Miller posted an app with the exploit inside to the App store. With the app (a stock ticker) he was able to take complete control over the iPhone he was testing with.

Now it seems that Miller has moved on from the indignation of the incident and is now looking into the security of other devices. This demo showed off how NFC can be exploited; fortunately for most people total control of your phone is not likely. In his demo he used an older version of Android and a Nokia N9 with MeeGo. Most people that have NFC will have more secure settings, but the potential for exploits or to use NFC as a vector for attack is pretty high. Most experts recommend turning Bluetooth, WiFi and NFC off when you are not using them. It can be a pain to turn them on and off all the time, but the alternative is to have someone take control of your phone or grab data including any credit cards that you might have assigned to your digital wallet. The demo touches on something else. If someone can grab data from your phone through NFC how secure are they for check-in at airports or keys for hotels?

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