Apple’s new patent disables jailbroken devices

Apple’s biggest opponent isn’t Nokia, Motorola, or even Google; it’s the United States government. A few weeks ago, the US government officially legalized jailbreaking of Apple’s iDevices, including the iPhone and iPad. The law allows for the hacking of devices for “educational purposes.” Although Apple can still void warranties if their devices are jailbroken, they are seeking to bring the actual law into its own hands. In February, the company filed a patent to prevent thievery that would allow for the disabling of potentially stolen devices, and would protect sensitive information stored on the device from would-be burglars. For example, any phone suspected of being stolen could have passwords, credit card numbers, and other information sent to a, Apple storage server and then erased from the device completely. Although this anti-theft mechanism sounds useful, the patent was published Thursday and has a hidden dark side; the patent would also allow Apple to remotely disable devices which have been jailbroken or otherwise hacked by monitoring memory usage spikes, which could apparently “indicate that a hacking program is being run and that an unauthorized user may be using the electronic device.” Once Apple has wiped the data, AT&T is instructed to “shutdown any telephone service to the electronic device, shutdown the electronic device itself, or otherwise suitably extract the functions of the electronic device.” I give hackers a month and a half before they find a clever workaround to this one as well.

(via Mashable)

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Tagged as: Apple, iPad, iPhone, jailbreak