Article by George Norman

On 16 Feb 2010

Reports on the web have it that at least two users have been banned from the App Store for “security reasons.” When the two users in question - Sherif Hashim and iH8sn0w – plugged in their iPhone and tried to connect to the App Store, they received this message: “This Apple ID has been disabled for security reasons.

The catch is that users Sherif Hashim and iH8sn0w are not your run-of-the-mill, regular Phone user. They are “individuals who are well known as having publicized vulnerabilities” as explained by Director of Malware Intelligence with Eset, David Harley. Apple may have decided to ban these users because they are "perceived as posing a security threat, not as a means of punishing jailbreakers by denying them the opportunity to pay for legitimate, approved apps supplied by software houses with whom Apple has a commercial relationship" .


Rumor on the web had it that Apple started to ban jailbroken iPhone and kicked off this initiative by banning Sherif Hashim and iH8sn0w. Turns out this is not the case. Apple, despite its obvious extreme dislike of jailbreaking, is not banning iPhone users that have a jailbroken device. They are banning iPhone users that actively work to find exploits in the iPhone software to create jailbreaks for the rest of the world to use. Hashim and iH8sn0w fall directly into this category of users.

Sherif Hashim for example developed a hack for the iPhone OS 3.1.3, which was released earlier this month. iH8Sn0w on the other hand developed the XEMN tool designed to unlock iPhone 3.1.3 radio baseband for the 3G and 3GS. As you can see, they’re not exactly your run-of-the-mill iPhone user.

In related news, the iPhone Dev Team has recently issued a warning to all iPhone users that want to jailbreak their devices. The warning drew attention to the fact that there are sites out there that lure users in with promises of a “a 3.1.3 jailbreak for newer devices like the iPod touch 3G, or a baseband 05.12 software unlock” – but these are nothing more than scam sites.



Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPhone OS 3.1.3, Jailbreak, App Store

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