Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: iPhone can phone home and kill apps? - says yes
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 05:59:28 -0700
Ot is interesting -- when Microsoft was suspected of being able to do the same type of thing, that is disable apps that it considered improper or damaging, there was a yell that was heard around the world. Apple , with it shiny armor, gets mild noice. Hmm. djf ________________________________________ From: ed.well.com () googlemail com [ed.well.com () googlemail com] On Behalf Of Edward S. Rustin [ed () well com] Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 2:43 AM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] iPhone can phone home and kill apps? - says yes To take the other side of the argument - just because Apple =can= blacklist applications doesn't mean it =will= blacklist applications. Surely it should not be a surprise that it's possible for applications to be blacklisted, but I would be very surprised if the mechanism exists (and that's assuming that it really does exist, rather than this just being an unused setting tucked away in the code - has anybody actually seen an iPhone/iPod Touch access this URL?) for any purpose other than to kill a malicious application which somehow made it through the Apple review process. We've already seen that applications can be pulled from the App Store without affecting any of the existing installations - NetShare and Aurora Feint for example, so it doesn't look like Apple is interested in blacklisting an application just because it retroactively failed their review process. Now take the example of an iPhone worm, or an application which had a flaw that caused it to interfere with cell phone traffic, or a Trojan Horse, say a game which also just happened to send your personal data back to a server somewhere. In those cases would you not expect Apple to be able to remotely kill the Application, or should they just leave it be and hope that every iPhone user can just be persuaded to uninstall it? On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 1:24 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
http://www.iphoneatlas.com/ ççiPhone can phone home and kill apps? Posted 6 August 2008 @ 11am in News Apple has apparently included a blacklisting mechanism in iPhone OS 2.x via which the device can phone home, check for unauthorized applications, and disable them. The OS includes a URL that points to a page containing a list of unauthorized applications, specifically: https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps Per Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the book iPhone Open Application Development and an iPhone Forensics manual: "This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down. "I discovered this doing a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation." Posted 6 August 2008 @ 11am in News Apple has apparently included a blacklisting mechanism in iPhone OS 2.x via which the device can phone home, check for unauthorized applications, and disable them. The OS includes a URL that points to a page containing a list of unauthorized applications, specifically: https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps Per Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the book iPhone Open Application Development and an iPhone Forensics manual: "This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down. "I discovered this doing a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation." ________________________________ Archives
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- Re: iPhone can phone home and kill apps? - says yes David Farber (Aug 07)
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- Re: iPhone can phone home and kill apps? - says yes David Farber (Aug 07)
- Re: iPhone can phone home and kill apps? - says yes David Farber (Aug 08)
- Re: iPhone can phone home and kill apps? - says yes David Farber (Aug 08)
- Re: iPhone can phone home and kill apps? - says yes David Farber (Aug 08)
- Re: iPhone can phone home and kill apps? - says yes David Farber (Aug 08)
- Re: iPhone can phone home and kill apps? - says yes David Farber (Aug 08)