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This would be a major departure from Apple if they don't actively fight the jailbreakers/unlockers. Apple has spent a lot of time and money fighting people try

• ugh 16y ago
  Has Apple done that?
  • daeken 16y ago
    Has MS done that? As far as I'm aware, they haven't actively protected their devices from jailbreaking. I think only time will tell whether or not they decide to go down that path. Edit: The question was reworded to be less vague, so I'll answer here rather than deleting the previous one. Apple has actively fought jailbreaks and unlocks time and again. From explicit code to brick the baseband in the early days of the unlock (just before I left the iPhone dev team, in late 2007), to their continuing battle to re-jail iOS devices. With each release, they're making it harder and harder to take control over your own devices.
    • rimantas 16y ago
      What do you want them to do? Leave security holes unpatched or maintain backward compatibility with jailbreaking code when releasing new iOS versions?
      • daeken 16y ago
        Neither. The solution is simple: don't fix non-vulnerabilities for the purpose of breaking jailbreaks/unlocks. In a number of cases, jailbreaks have been done via real vulnerabilities, e.g. browser vulns, but this is 1) due to closing "security holes" that enabled early jailbreaks, and 2) not the majority.
        • deleted 16y ago
          [deleted]
• colinprince 16y ago
  They're not fighting the jailbreakers, per se. What they're doing is closing the security holes that allow exploits like jailbreaking. This is a sensible and desirable thing to do.
  • A1kmm 16y ago
    These 'security holes' are not typically security holes which let people do things with the device without authorisation from the device's owner; instead, they prevent authorised people (by the person with legal authority over the device, i.e. the owner) from doing things, so are better termed a deficiency in an anti-feature rather than a security hole. Fixing the holes in the anti-features may be in the interests of Apple if it lets them get a better deal with mobile networks, but it isn't in the interests of device owners.
    • irons 16y ago
      These 'security holes' are not typically security holes which let people do things with the device without authorisation from the device's owner; instead, they prevent authorised people… from doing things The exploits used to allow authorized people to "do things" are the same exploits that can be used to allow unauthorized people to "do things". There's no differentiation at all, except the intent of the person writing the exploit payload. You might argue that Apple should give jailbreakers everything they want, but Apple won't do that. You can't seriously argue that Apple should hold off on patching security holes because they're being used today by nice people.
• irons 16y ago
  Be serious. Apple closes security holes in iOS as they're discovered, just like every other OS vendor. Not closing them would be unthinkable, regardless of whether some exploits are currently being put to popular use. The platform would suffer more if they didn't. If anything, Apple deserves grief for not aggressively releasing patches to holes discovered in prior versions of the OS, after they've been obsoleted.
  • daeken 16y ago
    It's difficult to call much of what Apple has done "closing security holes". For instance, the original jailbreak required physical access, as it was done via recovery mode. This is no more a "security hole" than single-user mode on OS X.
    • irons 16y ago
      Are you really arguing that highly portable mobile devices shouldn't be proof against an in-person attack by someone you know, say over the course of a shower, or having left your phone on your desk over lunch? Of course that's a security hole. (So is single-user mode.)
      • daeken 16y ago
        There are two important things here: 1) If someone has physical access to your computer/car/phone/whatever, you should consider it compromised already; it's all just a matter of how easy it is for the first person to do it. (Smart cow problem) 2) Real-world security, at the end of the day, is a tradeoff between safety and user friendliness. This is why it doesn't make sense for Hacker News to use two-factor authentication, but it does make sense for your bank. Every additional security feature has its tradeoffs; adding new ones lightly is as bad an idea as not considering security at all.
        • irons 16y ago
          A minute ago you were saying that a vulnerability requiring physical access wasn't a security hole. Now you're saying I should consider my phone compromised because other people have physical access to it. I don't see how you can hold both positions.