Over the weekend, Apple posted details of a patch for iPhone to its website, and the downloads were flagged on O2, Apple's iPhone partner in the UK, Infosecurity notes.

The security flaw could potentially allow a remote hacker to gain access to the iPhone by generating rogue or malformed text messages.

The patch was posted overnight Friday on Apple's iTunes web portal, Infosecurity understands.

At the Black Hat briefings last Thursday, the researchers - Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner - revealed how generating large numbers of malformed text messages to an iPhone could, under certain conditions, give a remote hacker access to the iPhone.

The researchers also said they expected the security flaw to be exploited within a few weeks by hackers in the wild.

"If we don't talk about it, somebody is going to do it silently. The bad guys are going to do it no matter what", said Mulliner.

But the story does not end there, as unconfirmed reports suggest that other mobile phones, notably the Google Android, may be subject to the same multiple text message modus operandi.

This suggests some form of buffer overflow is involved, Infosecurity notes, since the Android smartphone is based on a different operating system to the iPhone.