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Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple
- testinghello 15y ago> (He agreed to speak after Forbes‘ poking around Twitter, > Facebook and the Brown Directory revealed his name.) B this is the most important part of the story
- pedalpete 15y agoI'm not sure why you got downvoted on this, but maybe you can elaborate on why you think that is 'the most important part of the story'
- aberkowitz 15y agoIt appears that the journalists are engaging in unethical, borderline blackmail processes to get people to speak.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- canistr 15y agoAgreed. It's strange that people get all up in arms when the government does this for suspects and yet when some random journalists start snooping around, trying to dig dirt up on you, and blackmails you to write a story (and then proceed to make money from said story), nobody seems to care. Ridiculous. Forbes should be chastised for this.
- saurik 15y agoFor the record, I spoke to this reporter for a couple hours, and even had him tell me exactly how he got comex's name (which I did not actually know). He plays it up in that quote from his article, but it turns out getting the name was /trivial/: comex had a public Facebook account, in his real name, using one of his standard usernames. It is actually likely that he got the name before he even realized it was supposed to be "secret". In fact, I even joked "fair enough; you know, I've never actually looked, but for all I know his personal domain name is registered to his home address by his mother or something": it turns out it literally is. (It should also be noted that comex has agreed to talk to reporters before, such as for an article published by Reuters.)
- Vexenon 15y agoHis name also shows up in a few of his GitHub repositories, so it's not like they used illegitimate tactics to uncover his real identity that was already somewhat public. Forbes shouldn't be chastised over releasing his name, and anyone who thinks that blackmail or anything of the sort played a role is just being silly.
- canistr 15y agoYes, but it's the same thing when the FBI checks Facebook trivially. People still seem to have a problem with them doing any sort of searching via social networking.
- funkah 15y agoDisagree, they only should have been chastised if he didn't agree to speak to them and they revealed his identity anyway.
- breck 15y agoWhy? I'm confused, isn't this investigative journalism at its best?
- mason55 15y agoGovernments are (rightly) generally held to higher standards than private citizens due to the immense power at their disposal.
- canistr 15y agoThis has nothing to do with 'higher standard' if the media is the one responsible for publishing your name, publicizing it, and most importantly making money off of it.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- torstesu 15y agoOne of the strongest job applications I've seen. I guess he can put up Forbes as one of his references now.
- peterb 15y agoHe is looking for an internship. Hello, Apple, hire him already.
- catch23 15y agoIf Apple hires him, that will be the last time you see a jailbreak tool come from him.
- saurik 15y agoDepending on what they hire him for, it could also be the last time you see a jailbreak tool from anyone ;P.
- iam 15y agoThat might be the best reason to hire him actually.
- aninteger 15y agoThere's lots of people that work at Apple that help the JB community. Some of them also work on OSX86.
- daimyoyo 15y agoJailbreakme is an amazingly elegant tool. Although I seriously doubt they will, Apple should definitely hire him. His products show that he understands design as well as anyone on their payroll now. That combined with his obvious coding skills make him the ideal Apple engineer.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoNot to mention, it may solve their jailbreak problem, at least temporarily.
- rimantas 15y agoI am pretty sure Apple is capable to solve jailbreak problem temporarily themselves.
- ghshephard 15y agoRecent history proves that Apple is not capable of solving the jail breaking problems with their current security organization. If they were, then their Operating Systems wouldn't be broken so quickly.
- Xuzz 15y agoI think the issue is not their security team, who seem to do quite a good job securing iOS (which I'd consider one of, if not the most, secure consumer operating systems out there). The issue is that securing an OS is hard. It's hard to make it that someone with physical access to the device cannot just run code on it, which is what jailbreaking (in its purest form, on iOS devices) is.
- jonknee 15y agoArbitrary code execution is different than requiring physical access to the device. The JailbreakMe site could have run malicious code and it could have spread itself and run without the user knowing.
- drcube 15y agoI have no clue how there is even a question about the legality of using your own hardware for whatever you want. I could "crash cell phone towers" with my car, but that doesn't give Ford the right to weld my hood shut. Seriously, how is this acceptable to anyone?
- thematt 15y agoI would venture to say that the people who make the laws don't understand technology in the least. Think about your average parent or grandparent who equates AOL (or the Internet Explorer icon) to being "the internet". Now try to get them to understand a concept like jailbreaking, it's a daunting prospect, technology is emerging and changing at a rate faster than they can possibly comprehend. Society is asking them to make judgement calls about something they're not the least bit qualified to...and yet they're doing it anyways.
- jodrellblank 15y agoIs there such a question? If you jailbreak but continue to make phonecalls, use the AppStore, etc. are you in breach of any of the contracts you signed or licenses you agreed to?
- delinka 15y agoThe kind of control Apple seeks (to what purpose is irrelevant) is doomed to fail. You simple cannot control a device once it's in the possession of an 'adversary' (which in this context seems to be the owner of the device). Once the attacker (again, the owner of the phone who wants to jailbreak) has possession of the phone, he has complete control over it. I wonder if Apple has this internal posture that they should make appearances of caring about jailbreaking (for the benefit of the carriers and their contracts) but actually it's not such a big deal.
- Xuzz 15y agoI'm pretty sure that's correct. I know they take stuff like JailbreakMe seriously — remote code execution exploits and sandbox evasions might cause real issues — but I don't think they care all that much about your normal USB-based jailbreak.
- gte910h 15y agoYou assume apple overly cares about jailbreaking. I feel they wish it were impossible, but knowing that it isn't, just want to make it difficult enough 'normal people' don't do it and start breaking things on the phone and not understand their jailbreaking is what broke things. Hell, their AT&T contract was probably the only reason they got super up in arms about it anyhow. The reason Apple closes the security loopholes is that they are security loopholes. It's not some sort of arms race. It's securing their platform. Notice they have a pretty effective iBooks test for Jailbroken devices, but they don't deploy it widely, etc. I think they're at peace with the JB community as sort of a free research lab for them (hell, on device 3rd party apps came from the JB community first!) and use them to fix security holes in their platform as they are revealed.
- rsynnott 15y ago> Notice they have a pretty effective iBooks test Well, it's not that effective; it was worked around within days of showing up. Interestingly, to my knowledge, Google's similar check to prevent rooted devices playing movie rentals hasn't been worked around yet.
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- rimantas 15y agoJailbreakMe’s sophistication is on par with that of Stuxnet No kidding…
- dmooray 15y agoIt really is, if you have the skills to analyze it you should do it, you'll be surprised. Edit: Forgot to add the link to the source code https://github.com/comex/star_ https://github.com/comex/star_
- Apocryphon 15y agoIt sounded like sensationalistic hyperbole when I read it. Is the code really that good?
- Skroob 15y agoSo much misinformation. Apple "rushed to patch the security opening" because IT'S A SECURITY FLAW that allows unrestricted code execution via a website. That's a pretty huge problem; shouldn't it be fixed right away? "After Allegra released JailbreakMe 2 last year, Apple upped its game another notch, randomizing the location of code in memory so that hackers can’t even locate commands to hijack them." Another security method, and one that some people ripped on Apple for not including for so long. Now they put it in and it's a paranoid response to stop jailbreakers? Listen, there's no legal issue with jailbreaking. That issue has been settled, as much as it can be without a lawsuit and a court ruling. But Apple is under no obligation to make it easy, or to leave gaping security holes for jailbreak tools to waltz through. We need to stop acting like Apple is persecuting jailbreakers, when what they're really doing is fixing security holes.
- jokermatt999 15y agoIt's a difficult problem to explain in a typical narrative journalism style. Patching security is a good thing, yes. Being able to do what you want with your own phone, The Man be damned is also a good thing. Now, try to present both sides in a catchy article written for general audiences about a member of the jailbreak community.
- sambeau 15y ago"The tool isn’t intended for theft or vandalism: It merely lets users install any application they want on their devices. But jailbreaking, as the practice is called, violates Apple’s obsessive control of its gadgets and demonstrates software holes that could be exploited later by less benevolent hackers." I thought that was pretty clear.
- alanh 15y agoUgh. “Obsessive control”? “Obsessive”? It’s a (very smart and seemingly unbeatable) strategy to limit user actions on these devices to known-safe actions, to prevent users from e.g. changing how the system itself works. It keeps down things like: User confusion, malware potential, customer support, third-party developer testing (heterogenous devices), etc. I hate when bullshit business rags ascribe a quality like “obsession” (with the connotation of OCD or some sort of mental imbalance) to a booming business like Apple. As if they know better in this matter, despite the way Apple’s competitors in the market are making crazy little money in comparison…
- throw_me_away 15y agoThe kid goes to my school; we're both in the CS department. I met him once, and I saw him around the department a lot while he was still here. I don't know him, but from what I've seen, it's no surprise he hasn't found an internship: the kid is incredibly anti-social. Not to mention that being dismissive of other people in your first year isn't exactly the best way to build up connections. Before I saw this article, I honestly had no idea he was Comex. I could tell he was brilliant, but that's pretty awesome.
- grimtrigger 15y agoI don't think you should levy anonymous attacks on peoples personalities