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Posted on November 9th, 2009 by Jon Honeyball
Your iPhone has a virus? Well it’s your fault
So anyone who has hacked their iPhone now finds it open to attack. There is one word to describe this – “excellent”. I am extremely pleased that this has come about. I am delighted that people who have hacked their iPhone are now under attack.
Wooahh, you shout – this is not very nice of Jon.
No, but it is honest. If you disable the security on a device, and install code with default, known passwords, then precisely who is to blame here? The answer is simple – it’s your fault. If you break the bank vault door, then don’t be surprised if nasty people wander in.
If the worm broke into standard iPhones, then my wrath would be aimed at Apple, to ensure they got a fix out as fast as possible.
It is not, in any way, the responsibility of Apple. And it is bad and wrong of these headlines say “iPhone has its first worm” too. The target here is not an iPhone – it is a modified computing device that was once an iPhone. All liability fell away from Apple the moment you ran that jailbreak software. And all liability landed on you.
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November 9th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Totally agree. People regularly have a pop at various companies specifically Apple, Sony and Microsoft for producing products that appear to ‘lock in’. In many instances these ‘lock ins’ are actually an aspect of quality control rather than commercial fascism. As an example, Apple tightly couple the iPod/iPhone to iTunes not to remove choice, after all MP3’s are easily added to iTunes to transfer to your iPod, but by controlling the environment, Apple maximise the likelihood that th experience is integrated, reliable and as they designed it. It is free country and Jailbreaking your phone is not illegal, but you can’t complain if your phone breaks.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Although I agree the sentiment of your piece it isn’t quite factually correct. The default username and password is the same for all iPhones, whether jail-broken or not. The only difference is that you CAN install SSH on a jail-broken phone, which makes the exploit possible. However, this isn’t the case by default.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I agree that some of Apple’s lockdown is to help provide a secure environment, but their gratuitous limitations on Bluetooth force encourage the poor user to jailbreak. AFAIK, Apple are the ONLY mftrs who block bluetooth access to other makes of mobile. There is only one real reason for this, and it aint security.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I agree with Mr Honeyball to a point, users disabling security on a device should not be the fault of the manufacturer. However, as JC (comment 2) points out, the iPhone appears to be vulnerable anyway, as they ship with a default password. How about something like an installation script that runs on first use, asking the user to set up a unique password etc. Users will be users and many will not change the default settings unless forced to do so (ie there are not defaults). Couple this with the comments made by Danny Thomas (comment 1): my mum has recently purchased an ipod touch, and using it has been her and my first introduction to itunes. itunes is without doubt the worst piece of software I have ever used, it’s a pig): its file management is clunky (just where are my files?, do I need one copy free on my HD for every programme that I use and another copy bound up in some library somewhere), its use is unintuitive (I press “synchronise” and only some files get synchronised), I eventually drag and drop from the local collection to the remote collection and finally I copy the video across to the device. I addition, most of my music has been ripped in ogg vorbis format (it works fine on every other computer/portable music player I have), an open standard that is free for anyone to use, yet itunes and the ipod have no idea what ogg files are. Add all this together and is it any wonder that users will try and remove the straight jacket Apple puts them in for wanting to use their devices? No, I’m sorry, Apple should take at least some of the blame for this. They seem to make great hardware these days but spoil the whole package by locking users into their software as if they lacked confidence in the ability of their hardware to appeal to consumers.