Earlier this week there was something of a brouhaha when
some iPhone 3.0 users started receiving random instant messages seemingly intended for other folks.
Push notifications were one of the big additions in this release and so naturally a lot of people claimed the feature was broken. They were partially right, but wrong in blaming Apple, as it was they who had themselves broken it. The iPhone generates unique public/private keys upon activation that identify handsets to secure those pushed IMs, and it should come as no surprise that unlocking tools use duplicated keys to facilitate illicit use. You know what happens when you share dirty keys, right? With single identifiers registered to multiple phones instant messages are getting zinged all over the place rather than to their intended destination, a feature we're guessing spammers will start exploiting in three... two...
The keys don't have to be unique, I mean.
OK, for those talking about using the IMEI...well iPod Touches are not phones...so no push notification for them if your idea was implemented. Then there's the iTunes account login...but if you own an iPhone and your wife an iPod Touch you need two separate accounts so you don't keep getting invited to her friends mulitplayer game.
The point is, someone much brighter than us has already sat down and gone through all the OBVIOUS answers...and this was the answer they came up with...a number generated by iTunes. Now if you're skipping iTunes to activate, you're gonna get all the Dev teams Nimbuzz notifications.
why not use something like the mac address?
It's the iPhone/iPod Touch distinction again...some people may never use the Wifi on the iPhone seeing as they have 3G to get data. not that it's not already there, but we don't know how this connection is made. Is the push server looking at how you're connecting and determine the number from there or does it connect with your device and sniff out all the info it needs regardless, just to push notifications to you. seems like there would be a lot of traffic.
MAC address, serial number, combination of you iTunes ID with one of these, or a combination of your iTunes ID with a number identifying what model it is (and if you have two of the same model under one account) give it a number 1-10 to uniquely ID it.
the phone or touch should still be able to read the mac address (or at least store it elsewhere upon activation) then access it for use as a unique key
Too easy to discover and spoof with those options, perhaps. Whatever they choose does have to be secure.
My GPS broke when I updated to 3.0 and I'm pretty sure I't has nothing to do with unlock
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9661391
This is to everyone who says apple shouldn't care what happens when people mess with their software / hardware:
I completely disagree. When making a product, you take a look at your user base, and try and design the product to be something they will enjoy. Now, I have no numbers, and I won't throw anything out there that is made up, but if a significant portion of people who purchase an iphone jailbreak or otherwise want to change the functionality, why WOULDNT the company want to think about THOSE PAYING customers when designing fixes, updates, etc.
Its only bad for their partnerships for them to say "Hey AT&T, we actually DONT care if people jailbreak or unlock their phones, because they still bought our phone," so, pretend they would rather have people purchase the phone and not really care what they use it for, they could fix problems that a significant portion of their consumers have, while still saving face for their partners.
Sounds like a win win to me...
-James
Apple wouldn't want to think about jailbroken or otherwise altered iPhones because it's a support nightmare. Imagine being expected to anticipate every little issue from any programmer out there tinkering with the code... It's not practical.
I never mentioned anything about anticipating problems. I just said, it a large enough percentage of their users jailbreak it, and they want those users to continue to purchase new product, they may think of helping fix issues.....
I dunno how large of userbase is enough for them to care.
like Korg, they know that people are going to hack their padKontrol, and instead of fixing the 'bug' they let it go because they know it will only help people buy their product. They don't care if people do something to make it not work 'properly' on their own time, they just care that product was moved.
-James
i can almost guarantee the percentage is not large enough for them to care...remember this isn't jailbreak only, this is unlocked and not activated through itunes
and there is no way they can "save face" with at&t by enabling users to take the phones to other carriers...people don't often unlock phones to stay on the original carrier (foreign travelers excluded)
this is only partially true. It will only affect normal users if they willingly extracted the key to make it work on a 2nd (hacktivated) phone, otherwise it will only affect people that not only jailbroke and hacktivated their phone, but installed a 3rd party (not from the official jailbreak process) fix that included the certificates. The dev-team said to use your own cert from another device like an ipod touch or other iphone, other ppl then packaged it with one and the same cert.
It is not a problems from Jailbreak or Unlocking. This problem is generated by the hactivation.
If you jailbreak and unlock your phont, when you activate your phone using iTunes, it will generate the corrected key.
and it will not duplicated with others.
But, if the phone is not activated using iTunes (Hactivation), the key should be generated by the hacktication software.
and this key can be duplicated with other's
CASE 1. if you jailbreak your phone, only. you will not get any trouble.
CASE 2. if you jailbreak and unlock your phone and activated using iTuens, you will not get any trouble. and you will not mess-up the otheres.
CASE 3. if you jailbreak and unlock your phone and hactivated using Unlock program, you may get the trouble and you may mess-up the otheres.
Sucks to be them. One more reason to get a Pre.
push on iphone isnt that great anyway
Not true mine works fine.
This article is false.
@dennisheadley
If you use the ActiveSync feature then it has nothing to do with your phone number. ActiveSync's "push" notifications is just an HTTP connection initiated from the phone to the server. If you are using HTTPS this is a secure connection directly between the phone and the Exchange server. It works the same way on all ActiveSync supporting devices, including the iPhone. For BlackBerry's "secure" push infrastructure on the other hand the message must pass from your Exchange server to a BlackBerry Enterprise server (that you own), then onto RIMs network, over their servers, and then onto your phone. Yeah real secure...if you trust RIM that is.
@rezaudio
My iPhone does everything I need/want it to do. It makes and receives calls (need), warns me when my mother is calling (need), allows me to check my email (want), play music without extra hardware (want), and show people that I make enough money to buy a fancy gizmo that does what dozens of other things do in a prettier package (????).
And I didn't even need to jailbreak it.
Duplicate keys are caused by cracked apps NOT unlocked iPhone. Yes, you have to have an unlocked iPhone to installed them on but there are plenty of people with unlocked iPhones that buy apps legally. If more developers would release free demos or trials of software this wouldn't be so much of a problem. F&*^ fellow unlockers stop making us look stupid. Try and then buy so we stop becoming part of the problem and become an valued demographic to Apple and just maybe Apple will release an unlocked iPhone after AT&T's contact is up.
Well actually this happens if you are so lazy that you don't use the program that enables push correctly. The devs released a program that will generate unique keys but what's happening is people don't want to actually run the command via terminal so they just copy other peoples keys and you get this issue. It's been an issue since the day of the hack but only for people copying keys...the actual hack works fine when you do it correctly. I and many others are not having these issues at all.
do you have a link for that? the only thing I saw from them was the one where they said you'd have to copy from a 2nd non-hacktivated device.
Seems to me the problem could be solved by decreeing that all carriers shall provide a blessed unlock method with a set maximum charge or maximum duration as customer.
The only reason I've unlocked my iPhone is so that I can use it overseas without paying three arms and four legs to AT&T. I suppose since I legitimately activated my phone with an AT&T SIM rather than hacktivated it that I'm not having the problem.
I know there's a lot of dirty unlockers :) who want to use their iPhone on T-Mobile but everything Apple and AT&T have done so far hasn't prevented that. I wouldn't even jailbreak mine if I could unlock it legitimately.
Short sighted business practices usually result in expected results when you don't give the public what they want.
i am an iphone owner
Pwnt! See what I did there? :D
Since the "benefit" of Apple's solution is that all traffic goes through the centralized Push mechanism, shouldn't Apple be able to detect the presence of multiple "Unique" keys on their push network?
Much the same way they can detect cloned ESNs when used on the same cell network?
So it only it affect Hacktivates? Well that doesn't apply to me.
I scratched my iPhone with a dirty key and now it has tetanus and broken push messaging.
If you buy a car and you put aftermarket parts on it, it might blow up. If it does, that's you're fault. For some reason computer geeks always think they deserve more than a product that just does what it says on the tin. You operate outside the rules, you assume responsibility. My phone is jailbroken and unlocked, but Apple doesn't owe me the right to mess about with their system, which incidentally works perfectly when it isn't messed about with.
It is not a problems from Jailbreak or Unlocking. This problem is generated by the hactivation.
If you jailbreak and unlock your phont, when you activate your phone using iTunes, it will generate the corrected key.
and it will not duplicated with others.
But, if the phone is not activated using iTunes (Hactivation), the key should be generated by the hacktication software.
and this key can be duplicated with other's
CASE 1. if you jailbreak your phone, only. you will not get any trouble.
CASE 2. if you jailbreak and unlock your phone and activated using iTuens, you will not get any trouble. and you will not mess-up the otheres.
CASE 3. if you jailbreak and unlock your phone and hactivated using Unlock program, you may get the trouble and you may mess-up the otheres.