Hackers intercept iPhone crash reports

Apple Inc.'s crash report mechanism may take center stage in the latest cat-and-mouse game between the tech giant and hackers trying to jailbreak its iPhones.

 

While a hacker group admitted Apple's latest iOS 5 operating system is tough to crack, it has written a program that can intercept crash reports.

 

Joshua Hill, a member of the hacker group Chronic Dev, is distributing the CDevreporter program that intercepts crash reports from iPhones destined for Apple and sends them to the Chronic Dev team instead, the British Broadcasting Co. reported.

 

"In the first couple of days after we released CDevreporter we received about 12 million crash reports," Hill said.

 

Hill said he can open up a crash report and tell if it will be useful or not for developing a jailbreak, but there are so many coming in.

 

The sheer number of crash reports his program intercepted has prompted him to work on an automated system to help analyze the reports, he added.

 

"There's nothing Apple can do that would make jailbreaking impossible," he said.

 

"Apple will always add new features to its phones, and there will always be bugs in its software. It's just a matter of find the right ones," he added.

 

According to the BBC report, crash reports can help Apple engineers determine the cause of an iPhone software crash, and develop a fix for it.

 

Such fixes tend to preempt attempts by hacker groups to exploit bugs in iOS and jailbreak the iPhone.

 

In September Mr Hill was working on exploiting five bugs found in early versions of Apple's iOS 5 to create a full or "untethered" jailbreak.

 

But by the time the final version of his software came out, Apple already patched the most important bugs. He sad crash reports were probably to blame.

 

"Chronic Dev is ready to turn this little information battle into an all-out, no-holds-barred information WAR," Hill wrote in a recent blog.

 

Fighting customers as well

 

BBC quoted Carl Leonard, senior research manager at Websense Security Labs, as saying the popularity of CDevreporter shows Apple is not just fighting hackers, but its customers as well.

 

The BBC report also noted the Library of Congress has ruled that jailbreaking Apple's iPhones is not illegal in the US.

 

"Users are consciously trying to help the Chronic Dev team, so they clearly want jailbroken phones. They want the additional applications, customizations and features that Apple doesn't want them to have, and which would otherwise not be available to them," Leonard said.

 

But he also noted Apple's bid to prevent jailbreaking is for security reasons, lest jailbroken users could unwittingly install malware.

 

On the other hand, Hill contests the argument.

 

"I am trying to make sure that my phone is safe and your phone is safe. Apple cares about money, not your safety," he said. — TJD, GMA News