Article by George Norman

On 30 Jul 2009

Apple, as we all know by now, does not want you to jailbreak your iPhone. But if until now the company cited copyright infringement as the main reason why you should not jailbreak the device, Apple now comes with a claim that makes us wonder: jailbreaking could knock out transmission towers. As Apple explained to the U.S. Copyright Office recently, by modifying the device’s operating system (as in jailbreak the device), one could crash a mobile phone network’s transmission towers. On a less worrisome note, one might also make phone calls without having to pay for them, Apple added.

Apple’s opinions on the matter came to light when the company provided its answers to the Copyright Office's regular review of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). When asked what services or functionality would be affected by jailbreaking the iPhone, Apple’s response included the following:


“Each iPhone contains a unique Exclusive Chip Identification (ECID)number that identifies the phone to the cell tower. […]via jailbreaking, hackers may be able to change the ECID, which in turn can enable phone calls to be made anonymously (this would be desirable to drug dealers, for example) or charges for the calls to be avoided. If changing the ECID results in multiple phones having the same ECID being connected to a given tower simultaneously, the tower software might react in an unknown manner, including possibly kicking those phones off the network, making their users unable to make phone calls or send/receive data. […]a hacker can initiate commands to the cell tower software that may skirt the carrier’s rules limiting the packet size or the amount of data that can be transmitted, or avoid charges for sending data. More pernicious forms of activity may also be enabled. For example, 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.”

You can read all of Apple’s answers here (PDF warning).

In related news, developers that had their apps rejected by Apple have started to help one another by posting their app rejection letters on a Tumblr-hosted blog (see here). Because Apple in the past has repeatedly demonstrated that it can reject an app on a whim, devs can visit the blog and get a better sense of how Apple enforces its app admission rules.

Once you do get your app in the App Store, you should know that Apple is now asking you to provide comma-separated keywords for the app (up to 255 characters). This will presumably make the process of finding certain apps a bit easier on the end user.



Tags: Apple, iPhone, Jailbreak, App Store, Dev, Developer, App

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