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Jailbreaking is Evil: Apple
Techtree News Staff, Jul 30, 2009 1307 hrs ISTThe company is pressing federal agencies to make the procedure illegal
Chances are high that if you happen to be an iPhone owner, you have "jailbroken" your phone at least once. So far, the procedure was legal and Apple could virtually do nothing to bring the "offenders" to justice. In U.S., there are an estimated 2.3 million jailbroken iPhones. Apple, who seems to have had enough of iPhone users jailbreaking its baby, is pressing federal agencies to make the procedure illegal.
While the legality of jailbreaking as of now remains unclear (in U.S., mind you), Apple has recently filed comments with the U.S. Copyright Office (DMCA) stating that the act of jailbreaking your iPhone constitutes copyright violation. In response, the copyright office posed queries as to why it thinks this constitutes a copyright violation. Apple had an elaborate answer, which also claimed that jailbreaking, apart from being a "mere" copyright issue could also turn out to be a major security issue.
Apple said that such phones could potentially allow hackers to remotely crash cell towers, initiate a DOS (Denial of Service) attack and in the worst case scenario, render the cell tower to an useless monolith for considerable amount of time. Apart from these security issues, jailbreaking (according to Apple) has many other pitfalls like making the phone unstable, possibility of a privacy breach, susceptibility to malware, inability to update software and an overall degradation in the quality of the cellular network. Why? Apple also claims jailbroken phones could expose children to unsuitable content! Lastly, the white fruit themed toymaker adds that all these factors put together lead to the "discouragement of innovation, and damage to Apple's brand and to its relationship with developers."
Now, while it's been quite sometime that we have seen people jailbreaking iPhones and iPods, we are yet to come across a documented attack on the lines in which Apple had stated. Thank Apple for giving people ideas! There has been, however, a documentation of network issues caused by a (jailbroken) application "Pushfix", which recently was "caught" sending AIM messages to multiple numbers, all thanks to some buggy code. That said, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has already pooh-poohed Apple's theory and has called it a "hill of beans". The copyright office is expected to give its final ruling sometime in October.
For the uninitiated, jailbreaking allows iPhone users to "unlock" the iPhone and allow users to install "unauthorized" applications on the phone. Unauthorized here means apps that have not received Apple's stamp of approval and those which are not available from the closed door, Apple App Store.
While the legality of jailbreaking as of now remains unclear (in U.S., mind you), Apple has recently filed comments with the U.S. Copyright Office (DMCA) stating that the act of jailbreaking your iPhone constitutes copyright violation. In response, the copyright office posed queries as to why it thinks this constitutes a copyright violation. Apple had an elaborate answer, which also claimed that jailbreaking, apart from being a "mere" copyright issue could also turn out to be a major security issue.
Apple said that such phones could potentially allow hackers to remotely crash cell towers, initiate a DOS (Denial of Service) attack and in the worst case scenario, render the cell tower to an useless monolith for considerable amount of time. Apart from these security issues, jailbreaking (according to Apple) has many other pitfalls like making the phone unstable, possibility of a privacy breach, susceptibility to malware, inability to update software and an overall degradation in the quality of the cellular network. Why? Apple also claims jailbroken phones could expose children to unsuitable content! Lastly, the white fruit themed toymaker adds that all these factors put together lead to the "discouragement of innovation, and damage to Apple's brand and to its relationship with developers."
Now, while it's been quite sometime that we have seen people jailbreaking iPhones and iPods, we are yet to come across a documented attack on the lines in which Apple had stated. Thank Apple for giving people ideas! There has been, however, a documentation of network issues caused by a (jailbroken) application "Pushfix", which recently was "caught" sending AIM messages to multiple numbers, all thanks to some buggy code. That said, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has already pooh-poohed Apple's theory and has called it a "hill of beans". The copyright office is expected to give its final ruling sometime in October.
For the uninitiated, jailbreaking allows iPhone users to "unlock" the iPhone and allow users to install "unauthorized" applications on the phone. Unauthorized here means apps that have not received Apple's stamp of approval and those which are not available from the closed door, Apple App Store.
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,MN, on Jul 31, 2009 12:02 PM
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