Skip to main content

Steve Jobs Confirms iPhone Has a Kill Switch!


Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor.com
Mon Aug 11, 3:50 PM ET

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has confirmed that the iPhone 3G has a kill switch that can remotely remove software from the devices.

Jobs told The Wall Street Journal that Apple needs the capability in case it inadvertently allows a malicious program -- such as an application that steals user's personal data -- to be distributed to iPhones through its App Store.

"Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull," Jobs said.

Switch Not Used

Jobs' statement reveals Apple hasn't used the kill switch yet, but the company did remove an application from the App Store last week.

Apple removed the $999 "I Am Rich" application, which had the sole purpose of showing people the owner has money. The program creates a red icon that sits on the iPhone deck with a the words "I Am Rich" underneath. After the user activates the application, it glows on the handset like a ruby.

Apple initially approved the application, which bumps up against the pricing limit for applications sold on its App Store. The company was not immediately available for comment on why it decided to pull the plug.

Disappearing Acts

But the real controversy started when Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the books iPhone Open Application Development and iPhone Forensics Manual, discovered a URL buried in Apple's firmware. That URL links to a file dubbed "unauthorizedApps" where malicious or simply bad apps might go once they disappear from the App Store.

According to Zdziarski, I Am Rich isn't the only app to disappear. BoxOffice (renamed to Now Playing) and NullRiver's NetShare were also removed. But removing the applications from the App Store and removing them from a consumer's iPhone are two different issues.

"The kill switch is a very controlling gesture. I am not sure why Apple didn't disclose it up front as simply a security measure," said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis. "Consumers will accept an awful lot if you let them know what they are accepting."

What Else is Apple Hiding?

In the past, Jobs has said he wants to be careful not to allow applications to bring down the network. Greengart doesn't see that as a major threat, especially since Apple is approving the applications.

However, Greengart said he's less concerned with the "heavy-handed and Big Brotherish" kill switch than the fact that Apple didn't disclose it in the first place. As far as he knows, no other mobile phone has a kill-switch capability.

"To my way of thinking, the issue is that you don't really know what your phone might be doing or not be doing," Greengart said. "I am not 100 percent sure what the capability is or is not. That is the problem. What is the capability? When might they use it? When wouldn't they use it? Is there anything else Apple is not disclosing?"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Soy Products Can Reduce Sperm Counts!

By: Heather Hajek Published: Friday, 25 July 2008 www.healthnews.com C alling all men who want to become fathers! Soy products may reduce a man's sperm count. Based on a recent study, men who consume soy products may have lower sperm counts than those who don't. The study was based on a small group of men who visited the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center from 2000 to 2006. Even though the study found that some of the men who ate soy products on a regular basis had lower sperm counts, the researchers conducting the study are not saying that soy products were the cause of the lower sperm concentrations. The men who had soy products in their diets recorded lower sperm counts than those that didn't, but their counts were still within the normal range. Researchers don't deny that during the study men who consumed soy products had lower sperm counts, but they want people to realize there are other factors other than soy products that may have played a role in th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Obesity linked to quantity of sleep!

P eople who sleep fewer than six hours a night - or more than nine - are more likely to be obese, according to a new US study that is one of the largest to show a link between irregular sleep and big bellies. The study also linked light sleepers to higher smoking rates, less physical activity and more alcohol use. The research adds weight to a stream of studies that have found obesity and other health problems in those who don't get proper shuteye, said Dr Ron Kramer, a Colorado physician and a spokesman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. "The data is all coming together that short sleepers and long sleepers don't do so well," Kramer said. The study is based on door-to-door surveys of 87,000 US adults from 2004 through 2006 conducted by the National Centre for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Such surveys can't prove cause-effect relationships, so - for example - it's not clear if smoking causes sleeplessn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Biggest explosion!

Thu Feb 19, 3:58 pm ET WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US space agency's Fermi telescope has detected a massive explosion in space which scientists say is the biggest gamma-ray burst ever detected, a report published Thursday in Science Express said. The spectacular blast, which occurred in September in the Carina constellation, produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than five billion times that of visible light, astrophysicists said. "Visible light has an energy range of between two and three electron volts and these were in the millions to billions of electron volts," astrophysicist Frank Reddy of US space agency NASA told AFP. "If you think about it in terms of energy, X-rays are more energetic because they penetrate matter. These things don't stop for anything -- they just bore through and that's why we can see them from enormous distances," Reddy said. A team led by Jochen Greiner of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics deter...
Post a Comment
Read more