Engadget reports that the iPhone is pretty much "wide open", so far as accessing data goes:

Bernd and fellow security guru Jim Herbeck have discovered that plugging even a fully up-to-date, non-jailbroken iPhone 3GS into a computer running Ubuntu Lucid Linux allows nearly full read access to the phone's storage -- even when it's locked

This is why the meme about Macs being secure, while Windows is insecure has been so flawed. I do believe that Unix is a better basis for security than Windows, but - Apple has mostly gotten by on a "security via obscurity" model - Macs are still rare enough (in percentage terms) that it's simply not worth bothering with them. There are so many Windows boxes that it's just better target environment for bad actors.

However, over in mobile-land, things are different. iPhones are very common, so having this kind of vulnerability is the sort of thing that could end up giving Apple some real PR issues.

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