Apple HQ on Defcon 1 Tantrum Alert After iPhone 2.0 Crack
by John Paczkowski
Posted on March 12, 2008 at 9:47 AM PT
Well, this certainly throws a bit of a wet blanket on Apple’s (AAPL) aspirations for the iPhone in enterprise.
The iPhone Dev Team, the folks responsible for the notorious iPhone jailbreaks, have cracked iPhone 2.0–before the software has even shipped. After decrypting the version of 2.0 included in the recently released iPhone SDK, the Dev Team jailbroke it so that it will run most any application (see video below).
Quite an achievement. And one that may have inspired shrieks of rage at Apple HQ. Many companies will obviously be put off by the security issues raised by such a hack, and it’s not going to be easy for Apple to close this hole. What’s more, if 2.0 is indeed hacked, it means Apple has potentially lost control of the sole point of entry to the device through which it had hoped to vet third-party applications.
Research In Motion (RIMM) must be smirking into its cornflakes this morning. Unless, of course, this is all part of Apple’s master plan. In which case, Steve Jobs is smirking into his soy yogurt.
Comments
Ummm… perhaps next time you can explain your tremendous leap in illogic. How does being able to run more applications throw “a wet blanket on Apple’s (AAPL) aspirations for the iPhone in enterprise”?
And how do you know that it’s not going to be easy for Apple to close the hole? Oh, I see, you’re just quoting the hacker who made the boast.
And isn’t the actual version of the software in the SDK 1.2, and not 2.0?
Posted by Michael Long at March 12th, 2008 at 11:41 amIt didn’t seem like a tremendous leap of illogic at the time I wrote it. But perhaps you’re right. Anyway, here’s the thinking that led me to my “wet blanket” theory:
Coming as it does so soon after the announcement of the iPhone’s software roadmap, news of the device’s hacked, yet still unreleased, operating system has got to be embarrassing for Apple. Essentially it means the company has potentially lost control of the sole point of entry to the device through which it had hoped to vet third-party applications. And that means it has potentially lost control of the quality and nature of the apps that can be deployed on the iPhone.
That might give companies considering enterprise deployments of the iPhone pause. There’s a potential security issue there. Which isn’t to say that the iPhone is any more or less secure than any other mobile platform, just that from an administrative perspective, the devil you know is better than the one you don’t — even if the devil you know is Windows Mobile or the Blackberry OS. So in the end, I guess it’s sort of a “why bother” issue, with the perception that the iPhone is so easily hackable undermining its sales to enterprise.
One last thing: It’s my understanding that the SDK actually does contain a beta of the iPhone 2.0 firmware.
Thanks for trading words.
Posted by John Paczkowski at March 12th, 2008 at 4:43 pm