- Saturday, 21 November 2009
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The daisy's for simplicity and unaffected air - Robert Burns
Jailbreaking Iphones could trigger Apocalypse
APPLE IS CONTINUING in its efforts to make jailbreaking its precious handsets illegal by spouting all sorts of nonsense about the untold damage which could be done if hackers are allowed to circumvent the Iphone's locked-down operating system.
The men in grey suits at the Cupertino Campus have even gone so far as to suggest that dastardly drug dealers will take full advantage of the unlocked device and turn all of our children into crack-addled dropouts.
Quite how making hacked handsets illegal would stop drug dealers – a social group not generally known for their law-abiding qualities – from carrying out their business is beyond us.
It's actually quite a surprise that Apple hasn't played the terrorist card in its running legal game of cat and mouse with the Electronic Frontier Federation, an organisation which battles big corporations for consumer rights.
The EFF claims that current hacks like pwnage, developed by a group of 'hobbyists' known as the Iphone Dev Team, do not contravene current DCMA rulings and that users should be able to use their phone on whichever network and install whatever software they like. Apple, which takes a 30 per cent cut of all software revenues, and a nice chunk from every airtime contract, not surprisingly, disagrees.
Apple is also claiming that hacking the handset's exclusive chip identification (ECID) could cause chaos by allowing multiple handsets to operate with the same identity. These deadly dopplegangers could, according to Apple, confuse mobile communications cells to the point that they will shut down, leading to the kind of post-apocalyptic communications nightmare frequently seen in Hollywood movies.
We're not certain how teenage girls not being able to text each other about their new boyfriend/shoes/dental work will adversely impact society as we know it, but maybe Steve Jobs knows something we don't.
However, this also raises the question of why the ECID is open to hacking at all, even on a phone which has undergone some nefarious jiggery pokery. That would be like hackers being able to spoof the MAC ID of a network interface card which, as far as we can tell, can't be done. If the Iphone ECID can be spoofed by software, then that's a serious design flaw in the handset.
Maybe that's why Apple is so keen to stop undesirables poking about in the innards of its ubiquitous cash cow. Meanwhile, the EFF maintains that the only change made to the Iphone's system by the most popular jailbreaking method is to circumvent the way the boot ROM checks the digital signature of an application, and that the only thing that hurts is Apple's monopoly, and consequently its bottom line. µ
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Of course thou can spoof MAC address, its exceptionally simple, just emit raw eth packet with spoofed source address; nothing to it, done it a million times. Doesnt even require specialized hardware, garden variety NIC can do it.
It was just random chance that it wound up being a phone. What Apple wanted was an ipod with a steep monthly fee.
Thous shalt has it right. Mac addresses absurdly easy to spoof. Some network cards can be reprogrammed with another mac address at will as well.
Bad comparison. But the issue is how to create a non-crackable unique ID on devices manufactured in the millions when the usual (economic) way is to use flashable memory and program the ID in at the assembly line.
yea my router has a text box where i can put in whatever MAC i wish, it even has a handy "clone this computer's MAC" button, which helped alot when my ISP restricted our ethernet access to only 4 MAC addresses registered with them.
deep potato has the issue at hand. But really locking a device to a network, especially a popular one is akin to monopoly which mac is... no stranger too.
Man, where do these article writers get their info and how to they manage to make a living. Not only can you alias the mac address of a card, but most drivers contain functionality to allow you to do it out of the box. Sometimes it becomes important for network administration. I think the important thing highlighted here is that even a $40 home router can handle this fine, why not a $500K(?) celphone tower?
For Apple to use this type of logic should dictate that the phones be removed from the market because of the inherent threat.
Morons
Mac Spoofing is so easy a child could do it. on linux there is a program called macchanger which does it all for you. Sure, the address cannot be changed on the hardware, but all sent packets will have the spoofed address.
So what if Apple wants to secure the iPhone? If you bought an iPhone you knew what you were getting into. If you don't like it, buy something else. The consumer rights angle is rediculous. The iPhone is completely a luxury item.
Monopolies themselves are not illegal. Using the monopoly abusively is.
How did Apple get Alan Rickman to act as the baddy cracking iPhones? Not that he wouldn't fulfil the roll exceptionally well.
The $40.00 router will not "handle this fine." If there are two devices with thw same MAC on the network at once, there's going to be confusion below the network layer. I'm less familiar with cell networks than ethernet, but I'll just observe that the problem might be worse when handling hundreds or thousands of nodes. Whether this is a real threat to cell networks is another matter. If you want to bring down such a network, is your best choice to jailbreak hundreds of iPhones so you can duplicate the IDs and thereby cause havoc? Somehow I doubt that.
I could see this being a problem if your adversary wanted to be able to spoof a particular phone. However, I can't see this being a problem exclusive to the iPhone.
They will actually handle it fine.
The only problem will be for the stations with the same MAC.
The network itself does not really care, you will get a lot of notifications about MAC flapping, but thats it.
It wont disrupt traffic for other stations.
[Rant-On]
What part of "Once I buy it they no longer own it" don't these companies understand now days?
Apple used to be worth the extra you paid for the name. More and more nowdays they're only an over priced Dell with a fancy OS.
The ONLY thing unlocking the iPhone does is take the control / and thus the "You'll use it like we want and only run the apps we sell" on Your device we still claim we own. Awww... Poor poor Roten-Apple gonna loose a few $$$.
They can take their entire product line and stick it where the sun don't shine for all I care. Until they pull their heads out and start to once again provide the high quality gear that made the company what it was. They won't see a so much as a dime from me.
[/Rant-Off]
its only more Apple crap. The sad thing is that some iTards will actually believe it, and propagate it. Jobs is a greedy SOB...
Oh check this cool pic of an iPhone hax0r!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/toledocaindude/3706085184/
I'm pretty sure the MAC spoofing comment was a Meagher joke...
What exactly is the point of those flickr photos, apart from to illustrate why flickr needs a "report" button for people keyword spamming?
Doesn't mac already have spoofing... it's called SpyStar ....
I know, cheesy joke but it was too obvious.
You comedic ability is weak.
So, is Apple negligent?, or have consumers given over their power of attorney with Implied Consent?
I wish that the rightful owners of all my plastic, be so kind as to reclaim their liability for such defective instruments of cruel and on usury punishments. Will gaolbreaking ruin your credit? The Apocalypse at Jobstown? Mr. Don't drink the Kool-Aid.
Typo.... PsyStar I meant to say ;)
Ah great now I ruined my cheesy joke :(... ;)
Apple's focus is maligned by its desire to control everything. The question Apple should be answering is "why are people jailbreaking the iPhone?" and not "how do I keep from losing control?" Apple has realized an unbelievable window of opportunity by having almost single-handedly recreated the PC market with the iPhone. Even their brightest could not possibly have predicted the success of the AppStore and the number of apps written that would then translate to iPhone/ATT sales. Apple was first out of the chute and the competition has realized their weaknesses. Trust me, if Apple cannot provide an iPhone update with full multi-tasking, MMS, tethering, etc support then I will be the first to happily trade-in by beloved iPhone for an Android based model that is not handicapped without these encumbrances. Oh, and by the way, so will millions of others.
"I'm pretty sure the MAC spoofing comment was a Meagher joke...
"
Looks to me like it was a report of Apple's position.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/07/jailbreak/
Well, that goes both ways, it could be that anybody could be approached by counter terrorists agents asking you a question like "Have you seen this man?" while handing you a clear reflective surface [like a mirror]. Any reply you would give would put you in the terrorist slammer!
Steve Jobs... dead man walking.
http://mashable.com/2009/07/30/iphone-hack/ iPhone Hack Exposed: The Key Facts
In yet another episode of the ongoing series
"Can't be done" versus the Linux command line
we present this one liner:
sudo ip link set dev eth0 address 06:05:04:03:02:01
Just because it's against the law to drive above 70mph (in the UK) doesn't mean that we don't do it... Apple have got this wrong, instead of fixing the weakness, they leave the issue and make it illegal to abuse.
Anyway, why would anyone really want a iPhone, they're hardly the best thing out there.
It must be remembered that Apple made this comment IN RESPONSE to the lawsuit brought by the EFF that seeks to establish the act of jailbreaking as legal activity to be forced on Apple Corp.
Naturally their lawyers would go for the worst-case scenario which, if you think logically about it with your evil geek head on, can be quite frightening...
Does this mean that INQ's favorite bete-noir has down been downgraded? (bete-grise maybe?). Apple's business practices would put Gates and Ballmer to shame.