Keeping on the theme of iPhones this week, we have a brief video explaining the top 4 reasons that the iPhone is Evil. Very funny.. and very very true! I'm not quite cool/hip enough to actually OWN an iPhone, but I covet those that do, and am just quite lame enough to own an iPod Touch and pretend it's a phone. Yep... I'm that redonkulous!

I was just spending a bit of time catching up on my blogosphere reading this morning when I was intrigued by a statement made by none other than my brother. Over at his AtariNinja.org blog, he authored a brief piece downplaying the risk of the latest iPhone screen lock bypass hack. While I agree with nearly all of his points, one line stood out from the rest.

This is a serious bug but I really don't suspect people stealing iPhones are doing it to get at your personal information. They are likely after the hardware to sell.

I'm not entirely sure I agree on this subject. While the comment makes sense at face value, and indeed the majority of iPhone thefts today are primarily geared at the resale value of the hardware itself, why wouldn't a thief at least entertain the opportunity to peruse and potentially abuse the data on the stolen device. Given the fact that it's apparently quite trivial to bypass the phones security screen lock features, what economic opportunity cost is there that would stop a "bad guy" from at least reviewing your data for potential money making opportunities? If a thief steals a car, they wouldn't ignore what's in the trunk and just sell the car (hardware) off quickly. I'd imagine they would pop the trunk (trivial to pass the trunk lock once your in the car) and see what is inside to plunder.

Because of the above opinions, the risk of the iPhone screen lock bypass vulnerability is quite high dependent upon what data you have stored in your phone. Sure there are some mitigating factors, as wxs has outlined in his post, but they don't lessen the risk of the vulnerability, instead they only serve to lower the likelihood of exploit.

What are you thoughts on the issue? Is the business risk of the iPhone screen lock bypass vulnerability really that high? Or are the majority of criminals in the world just going to wipe and sell your phone to the highest bidder on ebay? I don't know about you, but I'm not leaving my data to chance... (comments are open)