Apple claims Jailbreaking your iPhone could be a national securty threat In an effort to deter iPhone users from Jailbreaking their device, Apple has released a (ridiculous) statement warning customers that Jailbreaking could pose a threat to national security.

"The nation’s cellphone networks could suffer “potentially catastrophic” cyberattacks by iPhone-wielding hackers at home and abroad if iPhone owners are permitted to legally jailbreak their shiny wireless devices — that’s what Apple claims.

A jailbroken iPhone is a weapon of mass disruption, Apple claims.

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 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." Via Wired .

I thought we moved passed using "threat to national security" on things that don't actually have a threat. Sounds like it's more of a threat to Apple's App Store.

Labels: apple, iphone, jailbreak

  ¶ posted by Jimmie Geddes, Editor @ 7/31/2009 12:48:00 PM