Apple has gone through a major overhaul and patched 46 security vulnerabilities for the iPhone and iPod Touch

when it released iPhone OS 3.0. The last time Apple had issued a security update was in November 2008 alongwith iPhone 2.2 and plugged 12 holes.

21 of these bugs were tagged with the phrase “arbitrary code execution” which means that the bug is critical and it could be used to compromise the device. Apple does not follow the practice of ranking its vulnerabilities like Microsoft or Oracle.

What is interesting to note is that 50 percent of the vulnerabilities apply to bugs in Safari or WebKit. Most cases of hacks into iPhones have pointed to Safari and WebKit. 23 browser related bugs were in WebKit. Recently a German college student called Nils had won a cash prize of $5,000 for hacking Safari at the “Pwn2Own” challenge. Nils used a bug in WebKit’s handling of SVGList objects to crack Safari.

iPhone 3.0, which contains the 46 patches, can be downloaded by connecting the iPhone or iPod Touch to its sync PC or Mac, running iTunes, clicking on the device in the listing on the left and then clicking the “Check for Update” button.