Update 7/22: AOL has responded to the reports of misdirected push notifications, and has confirmed that the issue is due to the use of a workaround for push notifications on unlocked phones.

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If you want to have a hot and steamy exchange with your sweetheart via AIM on the iPhone, you might want to think again -- if you have an unlocked or jailbroken phone.

CrunchGear reports that Till Schadde with Equinux has discovered an iPhone bug where AIM messages could be sent to random people without you even knowing it. Schadde discovered this when he was notified that a message he had sent to his iPhone version of AIM got intercepted by someone else. That person proceeded to contact Schaddle, sharing the screenshot shown at right with him. Schadde posted the screenshot and detailed the bug on Twitter after testing it once more from his computer.

The bug is being blamed on iPhone 3.0's push notification and seems to be limited to unlocked/jailbroken iPhones at the moment.

Edit (12:20 PT): Schadde has tweeted that he was contacted by AOL via phone this morning, and they are currently investigating the issue.

[Via CrunchGear]

While Brian has not posted more details of the vulnerability publicly, he has acknowledgment from Apple that the issue exists; hopefully we will see an update soon that closes this hole. In the meantime, although Windows Safari users are advised to use a different browser to avoid the vulnerability, Mac users can simply set an alternative RSS feed handler to work around the issue.

Update 1/14: Per Brian's further research, the workaround below is not adequate to protect against the vulnerability, as Safari also handles URL types of 'feeds' and 'feedsearch,' which cannot be set to alternative handlers within Safari itself. The revised workaround calls for the RCDefaultApp preference pane, which does let you redirect the other URL types.

Thanks to Brian for the heads up & everyone who sent this in.

There's a lot of "could" and "might" in this story, folks, so keep that in mind. MacNN is reporting that a group of iPhone developers has identified a bug in the current iPhone firmware that could lead to an exploit of the Default.png file.

Default.png is what's displayed when an application is launched in the iPhone. Typically it's a static image, but some of Apple's applications use a dynamic file, which could be fooled into granting access to third party code.

This sounds like conjecture to us, and MacNN's sources are not known, so keep that in mind. Plus, iPhone firmware 2.2 is rumored to be released on the 21st. Perhaps it will lock this down.