Re: Fitting
"So... no physical access required."
Sorry no banana. You've fallen for The Register's default setting of melodrama.
Read the next sentence after this one:
""we have seen one instance wherein a lure involving XAgent simply says 'tap here to install the application"
It says:
"That attack relied on Cupertino's ad hoc provisioning used by app developers to enable installation with a link."
So the attackers need to set you up in developer mode with an ad-hoc provisioning profile. They need access to your device to get the device ID and set-up a provisioning profile for the app.
1. Physical access is required (unless you go round emailing out your device ID, which you have no reason to do and, indeed, Apple have made it impossible to find by accident)
2. Provisioning profiles are for developers and are limited to 100 device ID's so, this is hardly a threat that can be scaled
3. Even if you write scripts to set up multiple provisioning profiles, you would need multiple Apple Developer accounts to do so. So it would cost a fair amount, again meaning it can't be scaled to a general purpose attack.
4. Assuming you have the scripts and the money to target many users, presumably as soon as compromised devices surface using your developer account Apple would disable it, so you would have to spend a lot of money and have sophisticated shadow credit card accounts
Conclusion. This is only relevant for professional targeted hacks where you can gain access to the device and only then iOS7. Yet again The Register's security reporting sensationalises instead of trying to present the truth.