'Tasers set to stun' says discoverer of iPhone 'kill switch'

Stephen Withers
Friday, 08 August 2008 11:53

Business IT - Technology

When Jonathan Zdziarski found a clue suggesting that Apple's iPhone firmware included a mechanism for disabling applications that appear on a hit list maintained on the company's servers, the conspiracy theorists came out in force. But as the saying goes, "just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean They aren't out to get you."

Zdziarski's finding was (as far as we know) first reported by iPhone Atlas, which quoted him as saying:

"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."

"This" was merely a URL pointing to a file on one of Apple's servers, and Zdziarski subsequently used his blog to clarify the statement, pointing out that all he'd uncovered was a cached list of unauthorised applications and a URL that's apparently used to update it.

But by then, the tech media and blogosphere were off and running with all sorts of "shock! horror!" headlines, even though at that stage the whole thing seemed to be based on one URL and the content it pointed to - as far as I know, nobody had looked at the code to see how (if at all) they were used. No criticism of Zdziarski is implied: all he did was find an interesting tidbit and pass it on with some speculation about its possible purpose.

He has since dug a little deeper, and by feeding his own 'blacklist' into an iPhone has determined that it is possible to "effectively kill any application that attempts to use the GPS, including Google Maps."

Read on for more of Zdziarski's thoughts on the iPhone 'kill switch'.