Wireless carriers face ‘potentially catastrophic’ cyberattacks by...
Wireless carriers face “potentially catastrophic” cyberattacks by hackers if iPhone owners are allowed to “jailbreak” their devices, Apple said in a filing at the U.S. Copyright Office. The office is considering a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to…
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legalize jailbreaking - letting iPhone owners “hack” their handsets so they can use software not approved for distribution through the iPhone App Store. “Each iPhone contains a unique Exclusive Chip Identification number that identifies the phone to the cell tower,” Apple argued. “With access to the [baseband processor] via jailbreaking, hackers may be able to change the ECID, which in turn can enable phone calls to be made anonymously (this would be desirable to drug dealers, for example) or charges for the calls to be avoided.” By taking command of baseband processor software, a hacker could send commands to cell-tower software and “skirt” carrier rules limiting the packet size or the amount of data that can be transmitted, or avoid charges for sending data, Apple said. It said a hacker could even send commands to a cell tower “that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data.”