Apple says Jailbroken phones pose threat to entire network

Posted on 30 July 2009, at 3:40 pm, by Larry Greenberg

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I consider myself to be one of the biggest Apple fanboys around but this one just makes me go really?

Wired.com has posted an article which details Apple’s latest defense against the illegality of Jailbreaking.

Apple is claiming Jailbroken phones present a danger to the entire cellular network as they might be used to somehow crash the software which controls cellular towers.

The Copyright Office is considering a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to legalize the widespread practice of jailbreaking, in which iPhone owners hack their devices to accept software that hasn’t been approved for distribution through the iPhone App Store. Apple made the claim in comments filed last week (.pdf) with the agency.

The company’s filing explained that jailbreaking could allow hackers to altering the iPhone’s BBP — the “baseband processor” software, which enables a connection to cell phone towers.

By tinkering with this code, “a local or international hacker could potentially initiate commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data,” Apple wrote the government. “Taking control of the BBP software would be much the equivalent of getting inside the firewall of a corporate computer — to potentially catastrophic result.

Apple’s decisions lately have actually started to make me question just how much of a true fanboy I can really be.

You can read the entire article here.

Tags | Apple, Apple iPhone, Mobile Phones

3 Comments For This Post

mlearning Says:
July 30th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Apple’s obsessive control over their application architecture is the single biggest reason NOT to buy an iPhone or iPod touch.

The particular issue that you’ve commented on here is one of a number of recent events that have shown up the significant problems with Apple’s architecture and philosophy. Apple’s stance here is obviously ludicrous – they claim that making jailbreaking illegal will somehow deter terrorists and hackers! Lol.

And their recent decisions to ban Google Voice and Google Latitude because they “duplicate” features of the iPhone are ridiculous too. All of these actions seem to be commercially motivated moves to protect the income streams of Apple or their network carriers, at the cost of developers – and ultimately, their users.

As a technology blogger myself, I believe it is important to NEVER be a “fanboy” – no matter how great any company or product might seem. I believe that for a reviewer to place brand loyalty above objectivity undermines your very reason for existence. Reviews that demonstrate sound judgement rather than drooling excitement are considerably more credible and useful, and demonstrate that you operate at a higher level than merely “ooo, pretty”. Heck – even a magpie is capable of that level of “review”.

Cheers,
Leonard.
Larry Greenberg Says:
July 30th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Leonard,

I agree whole heartedly. My closing statement was meant to allude to the recent Google Voice happenings and how ridiculous it’s become.

I do disagree that one can’t be a fanboy and also objective.

I think I’ve demonstrated that with articles like this one in the past.

Just because we’re fans of a company doesn’t mean we’re afraid to point out their short comings.

As a matter of fact I’m personally probably even more critical of the companies I’m a fan of than those I’m not because I expect more from them.
Michael Anderson Says:
July 31st, 2009 at 8:57 am
It could be argued that being a fan is different than being a ‘fanboy’ … and that the addition of ‘boy’ to ‘fan’ removed any objectivity or ability to see fault.