Apple: Jailbreaking encourages cell tower terrorism, "catastrophic results"
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Jul 29th 2009 12:37PM
posted Jul 29th 2009 12:37PM
If trashing your push messaging wasn't enough to steer you clear of using your iPhone in unauthorized ways, this next bit of news might have you back on the straight and narrow. According to Wired, Apple's latest salvo in the fight over jailbreaking is a claim that pernicious, iPhone wielding techno-hackers at home or abroad could modify the baseband and use it to attack cellphone towers, "rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data." Of course, the idea that this would become more likely if the legal status of jailbreaking changes is totally absurd, but why let that stand in the way of a legal argument?In a related note, one of our editors (whose jailbroken iPhone shall remain nameless) got a strange baseband pop-up error this morning -- the very same morning that AT&T is suffering a "massive connectivity outage" throughout the northeast and midwest. Coincidence? Yeah, probably.
Read - iPhone Jailbreaking Could Crash Cellphone Towers, Apple Claims
Read - Anyone Experience the AT&T Outage?
Taking BS to a new level.
+1,
if this is true, apple needs to fix this, just cant say please dont jailbreak, cant see a terrorist heeding that request anyways!
Maybe the missing WMDs in Iraq were in the form of a bunch of unlocked Nokias, slipping out of the country under the cover of darkness.
a much more catastrophic level.
Flying a plane into an office building, releasing nerve gas on a subway train, poisoning our water supply...that's some probable terrorisim. Hijacking a cellphone tower and rendering it useless causing massive communication failures with a jailbroken phone...highly unlikely. If i were a terrorist, i'd just blow up the tower with some c4. After all, would I really be that much of a rennogade bad ass if I jumped on the iPhone bandwagon?
Apple is pretty much as good as it gets. That is, after all, how they make their money.
"Multitasking is waayyy too hard. Not allowing you to stream web radio while playing a game is a FEATURE, not a shortcoming!"
Here come the ninjas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mkl9rtttog
yeah i smell some stank BS on this one too
iPhones are stupid to begin with
I'd just like to point out I was low ranked and yet nobody was able to answer my question. Meanwhile, even more people are saying it's BS. Apparently, not a single one of you bottom feeding wankers has any idea why it's BS. You just like to say anything involving Apple is BS, because your heads are up your collective ass. That makes you trolls. Glad I could clear that up for you.
So... this terrorism is limited only to the iPhone?
man why does the iphone get all the features
"I guarantee if someone did jailbreak an iPhone and did attack a cell phone tower, the Apple Haters would be saying something like, 'OMG, Apple is the evil! How could they let this happen!'"
What SHOULD they say if this happened? Imagine, for a moment, that it is not BS. Who is to blame here? Would it be the jailbreakers?
It "seems like" BS because it is unbelievable to sensible people.
@ I love the waggle
You're missing the point ENTIRELY my friend. Say some group did commit a terrorist act, but about 20 mins before had used jailbroken iPhones to disable AT&T's towers in area. Say they blew up a bridge. You're on said bridge in your car, but you're not hurt. You try to call 911 for those injured. Oh yeah, no service, the towers are offline and you're on AT&T. The only option is to use T-Mo's towers but they're stuffed with all of AT&T plus T-Mo calls so you can't get through on roaming either. You try to call loved ones to tell them you're ok, no dice. They're scared you may be hurt or dead as they watch the event on the news. EMS can't respond, police can't secure the area. See how these things work?
I totally condone jailbreaking, it really stimulates development by programmers who otherwise may not write apps for the iPhone because they frown upon Apple's policies. But the statement made about cell tower terrorism is valid, like it or not, probable or not.
Darn straight, send those h@x0rz to GTMO
Zak, I didn't realize it had to be pointed out.
If utilizing the baseband processor for an attack against a cell tower would be any potential threat, it would have been done with any other baseband processor out there already. Cell towers are designed (by hardware and software) to deflect these kinds of attempts.
And second of all, if Apple has this kind of absolutely ridiculously flawed hardware and software out there, it's not the responsibility of the law makers to keep prohibiting jailbreaking, it's the responsibility of Apple as a company to take credit for the horrendous design defect and correct it. Maybe by recalling every iPhone out there.
You see, Apple is not making any real sense here, they're just making a silly case to protect their business model. It's a lie, it's a bluff, it's a scam, it's bullshit.
@Level 5
It's not valid at all.
Both Android and Symbian are totally open and neither have managed to bring cell towers down. Do you really think that a single cell phone can bring a tower down and that's nothing in place to stop such an event happening?
If you do, you're more deluded than Apple.
But Apple IS the evil Paula Chapel.
Sent from my iPhone.
It's BS because it's fear mongering.
This would be easier with real high-power RF equipment than a toy.
Churchy,
Seriously? I am in earnest when I ask that, because you, my friend, are going orders of magnitude out of the way to prop up your argument. Please, just accept that this is a fairly thin smokescreen to try and justify Apple's keeping their platform entirely under their control, and stop trying to justify it as a legitimate security concern. If it were legit, then Apple would plug the hole so they could remain, what was it, hacker and virus free?
Cui bono?
Paul Chapel: "And since Apple prides themselves on delivering platforms that are virus and hacker free, there is a legitimate concern here."
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/28/hackers-iphone-apple-technology-security-hackers.html?feed=twitter
I'll tell you why this is BS. It's not so much it's factually incorrect of Apple to say that the baseband can be compromised, the real BS comes from their agenda to make jailbreaking illegal. Pretty much every phone can be hacked for these purposes, what makes a jailbroken iPhone so special? Apple is just trying to scaremonger the authorities into make jailbreaking a crime.
@Jacob
lol so true, apple is just buthurt that people are using their devices in a way they dont want.
i'd like to meet the terrorists that are technically enough inclined to do something like this, and i bet if i really wanted to i could turn my verizon razr into a cell phone tower killing machine.
yet again apple, WHAT A JOKE
Paul, do you really not see why cardinal posted that link? It is NOT jailbroken phones that are vulnerable.
So, because Apple has enemies that would be happy to take down AT&T's network, it should be illegal to jailbreak the iPhone?
This is the question that you should answer.
Its BS for a few reasons.
Criminals don't care if its illegal to jailbreak a phone, then do something that is a considerably worse crime ie disabling a cell tower.
The amount of tech skills you need to hack the baseband and properly attack a cell tower, means you can figure out how to get into the phone anyway
You can buy off the shelf baseband chips with full programming, sdk and test boards for less than an iphone.
Making something illegal by saying it stops people from doing other illegal things is just dumb, its just a way of putting the fear into people so they can go after the real targets, who are requiring jailbroken phones, but are doing things that aren't intrinsically evil, just potentially hurting apple's bottom line.
@ Paul
No, if Apple took pride in making sure its platforms were hacker free, that security hole would have already been patched.
Apple is taking something that can be done with many devices and pinning it on jailbreaking. The statement they are making is analagous to saying you shouldn't put DD-WRT firmware on your router because you can potentially turn the Tx power high enough to disrupt others' service.
@Paul: "...because Apple has absolutely no enemies that would be happy to take down AT&T's network"
Oh I'm sure there are crackpots crazy enough to do that given the opportunity. But here's where you have to step back from your own brand of lunacy: What you just said is theoretically true of every damn cell phone. It will only become more true as phone develop laptop level OS and hardware.
I'm quite sure that some loon out there would just love, *love*, to bring down a network with a windows mobile phone, or a pre, or anything else. So if Apple has a flaw in their phones that make this possibility more likely when jailbroken than say, my own Pre, well isn't that a flaw in Apple's design? At the very least, a flaw in AT&T's network?
Jeebus man, a lot of people don't drink the Apple koolaid, but that doesn't mean we're any more likely to commit acts of terrorism just to spite Apple as a company. You hate the Pre, so are you planning to buy one for the purpose of rooting it and bringing down the Sprint network?
"If any of you guys actually owned a company like Apple, and there was billions at stake, you would be doing exactly the same thing."
Umm, then why aren't any of the other phone manufacturers, with billions at stake, doing the same thing? There are other phones that are just as open as a jailbroken iphone. Think before you post...
@Paul: "How do you suppose they use this killswitch on a jailbroken phone?"
They don't, but I fail to see your point. An iPhone can be jailbroken without Apple's permission already. So if this flaw exists, the legal status of jailbreaking has no bearing on the potential to bring down a cell tower.
Rather like DRM, the main affect is on two classes of people: Casuals who wouldn't know how to jailbreak a phone unless it was made idiot proof. And it affects legitimate users that just want to experiment with their purchased device. A criminal with the savvy to bring down a tower is not likely to be bothered by the legal status of jailbreaking.
PS Apple is neither better nor worse than many companies that float similar excuses. But this is an excuse.
This is BS because taking down cell towers like that is illegal ON ITS OWN. It's absolutely unnecessary to make jailbreaking a crime and if you can't see what this really is then you are beyond help. You're cheering on as the legal system is used to further the goals of a corporation just because it's a corporation you like. Just because an action can enable illegal behavior doesn't mean that action should be illegal as well. Should we ban cars due to the threat of vehicular manslaughter? What people do with the hardware you sell them is on their heads, and trying to save your profits in the name of safety should be greeted with hostility, not lauded.
Paul, if the iPhone were truly hacker and virus free, as you so wittingly put it, then why disingenuously reply back to Cardinal when he provided you the following link: http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/28/hackers-iphone-apple-technology-security-hackers.html?feed=twitter
You can't have it both ways.
Either it is, or it isn't "hacker and virus free", and the above article doesn't even deal with jailbroken iphones at all.
Besides, anyone with common sense realizes that your comment falls flat on its faces when you do think of jailbreaking.
The very essence of jailbreaking itself demonstratively proves that the iPhone platform is a weak one when it comes to security.
Here's one such side-effect of jailbroken phones: http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/23/iphone-3-0s-broken-push-messaging-caused-by-unlockers-dirty/#comments
Lastly, you surely could not have been referring to the Mac OSX platform when you were alluding to its security, Mac platforms are ALWAYS the first to fail when it comes to directed attacks: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9072959/Mac_easiest_to_hack_says_10_000_winner
Yes, Macs are easiest to hack indeed...
"Apple wants to outlaw jailbreaking so people can't use unauthorized apps to do malicious things. How much more clearer can that be?"
This is exactly what people are calling BS. This is NOT the reason Apple wants to make jailbreaking illegal. "Apple wants to outlaw jailbreaking so people can't use unauthorized apps" period.
"If any of you guys actually owned a company like Apple, and there was billions at stake, you would be doing exactly the same thing."
QFT. This is why they want control over the platform (or more specifically what OS you run on your purchased hardware). They want to charge you for things you would otherwise be able to get for free.
It's easy to categorize "Apple bashing" as "Microsoft fanboy-ism". However, I make this argument for WinMo phones too.
@paul: When the heck did I ever say that I "I hate the Pre."
My apologies, I'm not sure where I could have come up with such a strange and outlandish accusation.
"If any of you guys actually owned a company like Apple, and there was billions at stake, you would be doing exactly the same thing."
I'm sure I would. And people would smell the bullshit just as easily.
Paul: "That doesn't mean that Apple should hand over a loaded gun either. A criminal with the savvy enough to break into my house is not likely to be bothered by the legal status of breaking and entering, but I still lock my doors at night."
That's right, YOU lock your doors at night. How would you like it if Apple came to your house and forcefully locked them, even if you wanted to leave a door unlocked so a friend could get in?
"...I don't have to like what Apple to understand that this move makes perfect business sense."
Could you make such reasonable posts in the future? It's kind of nice when you state your opinion without tapping into a well of defensiveness. I mean, it's a fun time reading about Saint Apple and the legions of evildoers working to bring it down. But it's hard to discuss a topic in that context.
Except its not the equivalent of a loaded gun, not even close. It is more like a pile of parts that could make a gun, but you still have to build a bullet and firing mechanism, then actually do harm with it.
You're still left with the fact that disabling a cell tower or act of terrorism is a significantly worse crime than jailbreaking an iphone ever could be, a similar difference is owning a loaded gun, and then killing someone with it. Which is why most places owing a gun isn't illegal, and murder is.
@Zak, Ok the reason why this is BS is because of the way smartphones are designed. Smartphones basically are two miniature computers in one. One computer is called the baseband processor and deals with all the radio communications. In the iPhone 3GS, for example, the baseband processor is built by Infineon. The second processor in the iPhone is the one all the iPhone OS goodness runs on. It's fairly fast, and has a combined ARM and GPU. The main processor sends the baseband processor simple commands like 'dial this number.'
If it IS possible to trash a cell tower with a cell phone, that would require reprogramming the baseband processor. But jailbreaking doesn't do that. Jailbreaking modifies the software running on the main processor, and that poses no threat to the towers. Apple knows this, hence why their statements are complete BS.
The act of jailbreaking and using said jailbroken iPhone can be done without any affiliation whatsoever with a cellular network. You don't even need a SIM card inserted. You own the hardware of your iPhone. You don't own the utilities inside your home, which is why you can't change them. None of your analogies to utilities make sense, jailbreaking doesn't let you call/use data for free.
This is why grown-ups use Windows Mobile and Blackberry. iPhone is for children.
"...That doesn't mean that Apple should hand over a loaded gun either."
A fair point, but a thread of your argument assumes that a ban on jailbreaking is effective and that Apple's only motivation is to prevent terrorism.
Really though, it isn't the fact that Apple isn't rushing out to support jailbreakers that bothers me in this article. There are few companies that would sell and support completely open hardware. I'm not sure I'd like that much openness in fact. No, it's the fact that Apple is blowing smoke up my ass about the "catastrophic results" of jailbreaking.
Because as others, and myself, have pointed out: If a jailbroken iPhone can take down a tower then there are other "catastrophic" flaws that had a bigger role. And likely those flaws are exploitable outside of an iPhone. If not, then we circle back to the fact that Apple has fucked up royally with something unique about the hardware. And jailbreaking is not really that hard if you're a determined terrorist or average guy with a computer. So the parent to this thread is right: The argument is rather BS. Sure they may have the right not to permit jailbreaking, but couldn't they come up with a less paper thin excuse for it?
Churchy,
So, you said "But wait a second, there's something wrong with Apple keeping a platform that they designed and coded under their control? And all this time I thought Communism was unpopular in the United States." Wowee wow wow.
So far off topic that it's funny, but you imply that you agree with my assesment of the base motivation of this farce. You may want to try that schtick on Rush Limbaugh, though, they love Communism references there.
Anyway, I'm not commenting on the validity of Apple's desire to control the iPhone from all angles, I'm commenting on their using this tack to try and sway opinions. It is, quite simply, dumb.
"I don't think you're in a position to tell Apple whether a threat is 'paper thin.'"
O.K. READING COMPREHENSION
It's not the THREAT that is paper thin. It is the EXCUSE.
But, wait, I get it. Paul is a forum troll. And, it's getting to be a PITA to go back a page just to click reply.
You can't say "you guys" when it was only me. And the reason I pulled out the name calling is because you are not actually responding to any of Borland's points. You recreate his argument to suit your needs instead of reading and responding to the substance of it.
Why this is BS?
1. The talks are about allowing consumers to jailbreak phones. Has the banning of bombs stopped terrorists? How would a hackban on phones block this?
2. How can a phone hack celltowers? If that were possible it would have been done a long ago. As the cellphone to tower connection is scrambed why wouldnt the network control messages be scrambled even more robust?
3. If the iphone is such a risk why arent other phones. Or phone development kits? A quick search for phone development kits gets you several. Just order one and you have more powerfull and easier equipment than iphone for hacking celltowers, with better documentation.
4. Then there's cellphone test equipment that too is better for cellsystem hacking.
5. Then there's FPGAs and rf-modules that you can use to build your own phone firmware.
6. And if you want to knock out one celltower, or area easiest way to do it is with just a handbag full of cellphones, for those who are with the know. And that know isn't even hard to find.
7. Or with a pair of pliers. Just cut the cord. And then add your own hackcomputer to the line if you want to knock out more celltowers. This is probabbly the best way as the physical landlines probably have less security than the radiolink.
So complete BS. Celltowers can't be hacked with phones. And there are better and easier to use options ouut there.
Hey Zak,
Waiting for your reply to Papari's post:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/29/apple-jailbreaking-encourages-cell-tower-terrorism-catastroph/comments/20518824/
Newone,
EXACTLY !
This has virtually NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH TERRORISM -- it's just a ploy to ensure that Apple will maintain the status quo as it pertains to their draconian methods of oversight.
If they play the terrorism card, they hope they'll be able to persuade enough people in the right places to penalize anyone who doesn't subscribe to their prescribed policies; i.e. Apple wants everything to go through them and they want comprehensive control of their devices, all software and hardware.
If you jailbreak your phone, you are then able to circumvent Apple's draconian control, their tight-fist grip will be no more.
"...Why don't you let him say that if he thinks it's true"
If you're addressing me, then the fool has it: I meant the excuse. And I'm not sure why you're fighting that opinion so hard. Sure the closed platform nature of Apple is a matter of philosophical debate and I tried to steer away from that discussion. But you don't find Apple's line of reasoning on the potential damages even a little bit funny or exaggerated?
I'd hope you do, because otherwise if iPhones are that much of a potential threat to our nation's infrastructure then they should be banned, confiscated, and destroyed in the interest of national security. If jailbreaking en mass might lead to the breakdown of our cellular network, then it is only a matter of time before illicit jailbreakers can do the same. Apple has proven it can't prevent jailbreaking, so we must take steps. Lord, I hadn't realized how much Apple valued our nation over profit until I finally accepted their message into my heart. Their sacrifice will not go unrecognized.
But if like me you think this article is an exaggerated line of horse shit, please continue to enjoy your phone. Good night.
@LEVEL 5: well then, i guess its a damn good thing we all AT+T bitches now isnt it?
Apple has a problem. They want to control everything, maybe even with the customer's best interest in mind, but they fail to realize the fact that this country literally THRIVES off of giving people freedom.
We aren't just used to it, we expect it.
Until Apple lightens up and loosens the reigns a bit people will find their own ways of doing whatever the hell they want.
Too bad Apple can't just make all jailbroken iPhones self-destruct (temporarily). Why should all legitimate users of iPhones have to suffer for a few selfish rebels.
I'm saying this only if the claims of being able to take out a celltower with a jailbroken iPhone are true. AT&T is bandwidth short as it is and missing celltowers won't help a bit.
[from the iQuaeda App Store]
"Are you an infidel? What about your friends, coworkers, and family? Buy The Infidel Test on sale now and find out! Point and laugh at everyone when they get beheaded!"
This must be Apple's fault then since they allow the products to be jailbroken. So yes, Apple needs to fix this. :P.