Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey therein Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. And how
Speaker 1: the tech are you? So it's time for a tech
Speaker 1: stuff tidbits. I think this is probably gonna be pretty
Speaker 1: long for tidbits, but let's just go with that. And
Speaker 1: I got a message from way to Cold Mike on
Speaker 1: Twitter asking for an episode about jail breaking, which is
Speaker 1: a term I've not heard in quite some time, but
Speaker 1: back in two thousand seven it really started to gain traction.
Speaker 1: And of course we're not talking about breaking someone out
Speaker 1: of a literal jail. Now, we're talking about using vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: to break down the walls of an otherwise walled garden.
Speaker 1: So first, let's set the stage. Let's say that you
Speaker 1: are in charge of a tech company that produces a smartphone,
Speaker 1: and part of your revenue comes from phone sales. Right,
Speaker 1: you produce phones, they go to retailers. The retailers seldom
Speaker 1: to customers. That's your revenue stream. However, you've also figured
Speaker 1: out a way to increase your revenue by keeping a
Speaker 1: tight control on what can and cannot be loaded onto
Speaker 1: your smartphone, so you're acting as a kind of gatekeeper. UH.
Speaker 1: You might also be acting as a payment processing service,
Speaker 1: so you are in charge of determining what users can
Speaker 1: download to your smartphone. UH. And anything that uses in
Speaker 1: app purchases has to go through your payment processing system,
Speaker 1: so you can take a cut of all those transactions.
Speaker 1: And yes, I am describing Apple here, but a lot
Speaker 1: of companies do similar things. So this is all about
Speaker 1: creating an ecosystem and then controlling as much of that
Speaker 1: ecosystem as you possibly can in Now, this does not
Speaker 1: always work, of course. For one thing, people have to
Speaker 1: want to be part of that ecosystem in the first place.
Speaker 1: Right if no one likes your product or thinks it's interesting,
Speaker 1: no one's going to buy into it. And then it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you control everything, because no one's entering
Speaker 1: into your ecosystem in the first place. But we have
Speaker 1: seen this time and again from tech companies, particularly those
Speaker 1: that sell hardware, because if all you do is sell hardware, well,
Speaker 1: then you only make money if folks are buying your stuff.
Speaker 1: And if your stuff lasts, you know, at least a
Speaker 1: couple of years, it might mean that you have some
Speaker 1: pretty rough cycles like sales cycles, like if everyone is
Speaker 1: convinced to buy your product right out of the gate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be great for you in the short term,
Speaker 1: but then a year later, maybe no one's buying a
Speaker 1: new stuff because you know, the old thing still works great.
Speaker 1: So this can really kind of lock you into a
Speaker 1: a huff revenue cycle where you have big ups and downs.
Speaker 1: That's not great for shareholders if you have to be
Speaker 1: a publicly traded companies. So if you pair your hardware
Speaker 1: with some kind of service, you can continue to charge
Speaker 1: customers over and over over, you know, however long they
Speaker 1: remain a customer. And we see this with printers and
Speaker 1: toner cartridges, with famous examples being printers that can detect
Speaker 1: whether or not the cartridge you've inserted is an official
Speaker 1: one from that company or a third party knockoff, and
Speaker 1: if it's a third party knockoff, it might just not
Speaker 1: allow that to happen, like it'll lock the printer down.
Speaker 1: We've seen this with coffee makers. Curig famously tried to
Speaker 1: fight off attempts from other companies to create pods that
Speaker 1: were compatible with curing coffee machines. Curi just wanted you
Speaker 1: to go through the curing system, and we've see it
Speaker 1: in the right to repair movement with company. He's like
Speaker 1: John Deere trying to force farmers to you know, lug
Speaker 1: their expensive farming equipment to a license John Dear repair
Speaker 1: shop rather than be able to do any maintenance themselves
Speaker 1: or with a mechanic that they like to work with.
Speaker 1: All of these concepts are related to this idea of
Speaker 1: locking customers into a model where they keep on paying
Speaker 1: to be part of this ecosystem. All right, So let's
Speaker 1: go back to two thousand and seven. That's the year
Speaker 1: that Apple introduced the iPhone, and you may owe Ma
Speaker 1: Drew Gees have forgotten what that was like. Things changing
Speaker 1: so scoring nowadays and people quick to forget. Just give
Speaker 1: me a shout out if you actually get that reference
Speaker 1: and text stuff hsw on Twitter is the way to
Speaker 1: do that. But when Apple first launched the iPhone, it
Speaker 1: was before there was an app store. In fact, the
Speaker 1: iPhone app store launched just a hair longer than a
Speaker 1: year after the original iPhone debut, So the original iPhone
Speaker 1: owners went more than a year if they bought it
Speaker 1: on day one, they went more than a year without
Speaker 1: any kind of App Store, no way to add stuff
Speaker 1: to your phone. And it's not that the phone couldn't
Speaker 1: support apps. It totally could, and in fact it came
Speaker 1: standard with several Apple provided apps pre installed. But Apple
Speaker 1: was building out the back end of that ecosystem, the
Speaker 1: process by which app developers would submit applications for Apple
Speaker 1: to consider to include into the app store, and sometimes
Speaker 1: Apple did, sometimes it didn't, and those early days in particular,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty opaque process. There were times where
Speaker 1: developers would get a rejection and not really understand why
Speaker 1: they were rejected, especially if a very similar app would
Speaker 1: then get accepted into the app Store. So they were
Speaker 1: confusing days back then, and again that was a year
Speaker 1: after the phone had actually launched. And you see, Apple
Speaker 1: wanted and actually still wants, to control what sort of
Speaker 1: stuff could appear on the iPhone, which, when you really
Speaker 1: break it down, is just a small portable computer that
Speaker 1: happens to be combined with a phone, and computers are
Speaker 1: designed to run software. But Steve Jobs, the co founder
Speaker 1: of Apple, had long maintained a desire to restrict what
Speaker 1: sort of stuff could run on his company's hardware, and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different reasons for this. One
Speaker 1: of those reasons is just a desire for quality control.
Speaker 1: If you take care to make sure that only approved
Speaker 1: apps are allowed on your device, you can sidestep a
Speaker 1: lot of the problems that can come about when junk
Speaker 1: software hits a platform. If we think back to the
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties, we can remember the issues with video
Speaker 1: game consoles and how a flood of really crappy games
Speaker 1: contributed to an overall decline in popularity of consoles like
Speaker 1: the Attar, and ultimately the video game industry as a
Speaker 1: hole in the United States at least, crashed in Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that crappy games caused the crash, but
Speaker 1: they were a contributing factor to it. So that's one
Speaker 1: thing you don't want to have your platform flooded with junk.
Speaker 1: But another reason is security. Computers run on code, and
Speaker 1: if you are clever, you might figure out code that
Speaker 1: can exploit a computer in some way. Now, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about a computer that's also connected to a phone
Speaker 1: or a WiFi network, exploits can go beyond affecting just
Speaker 1: a single device, and we've seen exactly what can happen
Speaker 1: with big stories like the Israeli company N s O
Speaker 1: Group and the Pegasus product that that company produces. Pegasus
Speaker 1: leverage the flaw on Apple's Eye Message that would allow
Speaker 1: someone to gain remote access to another person's phone. All
Speaker 1: it would take is for the attacker to send a
Speaker 1: message to their target through I Message, So you just
Speaker 1: had to have the target's phone number, and you just
Speaker 1: sent the the attack through I message, and the target
Speaker 1: wouldn't even have to click on a link or anything.
Speaker 1: So this was a zero click attack, and it would
Speaker 1: turn the target's phone effectively into a surveillance device like
Speaker 1: the the attacker could activate the camera or the microphone,
Speaker 1: or just you know, scroll through all the stuff that
Speaker 1: that person had been doing on that phone. And this
Speaker 1: is the kind of stuff that Apple would rather not
Speaker 1: happen for obvious reasons. And then there's the potential for revenue.
Speaker 1: If you've got the final say on what can and
Speaker 1: cannot go onto your platform, and if your platform is
Speaker 1: really popular, then you can pretty much dictate terms to
Speaker 1: app developers. You have all the leverage the developers want
Speaker 1: their apps to get in front of as many people
Speaker 1: as possible. If the people happen to really love your product,
Speaker 1: well that means the app developers are going to want
Speaker 1: to develop for you, even if you happen to put
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of whops in front of them that
Speaker 1: they have to jump through in the process. And Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs was a brilliant salesman. When he first announced the
Speaker 1: iPhone back in early two thousand seven, six months before
Speaker 1: the product would actually release, he had that audience eating
Speaker 1: out of his hand. He highlighted some pretty cool features
Speaker 1: that are standard in smartphones today, but they're really innovative.
Speaker 1: Back in early two thousand seven and before two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: smartphones were mostly clunky and utilitarian, mostly the stuff that
Speaker 1: busy executives carried so that they could stay connected to
Speaker 1: their calendars and email or you know us as a
Speaker 1: status symbol so that other executives would know how executive
Speaker 1: they were. That's some commentary there. But the iPhone was different.
Speaker 1: It was sexy, It seemed futuristic and cool, and even
Speaker 1: as a brand new product, a lot of people wanted it.
Speaker 1: In the United States, initially you could only get an
Speaker 1: iPhone if you got it on a T and T.
Speaker 1: It was the only carrier that could carry the iPhone
Speaker 1: initially in the United States, Apple and a T and
Speaker 1: T had an exclusive deal that was to last a
Speaker 1: couple of years here in the US. But even with
Speaker 1: that restriction, a lot of people wanted in, but some
Speaker 1: people wanted a little bit more. I'll explain when we
Speaker 1: come back after this quick break. So, as I was saying,
Speaker 1: there were some iPhone enthusiasts who thought the platform was awesome,
Speaker 1: but they were not satisfied with the iPhone as it launched.
Speaker 1: They knew that as a computer, you should be able
Speaker 1: to load stuff onto it, programs, apps, in other words,
Speaker 1: and the iPhone lacked certain features that most cell phones
Speaker 1: already had, including a game. There was no game on
Speaker 1: the original iPhone at all. You could go out and
Speaker 1: buy a candy bar cell phone or a flip phone,
Speaker 1: not a smartphone, just a self own and you would
Speaker 1: get Snake on it at least, or Hangman or something.
Speaker 1: But the iPhone didn't even have that. But what if
Speaker 1: you could load programs onto the iPhone? While obviously Apple
Speaker 1: did not want people to be able to do that,
Speaker 1: the company was creating the framework so that it would
Speaker 1: have this full control of that ecosystem. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: hackers were prodding the iPhones programming and finding ways around
Speaker 1: the operating system's walled garden, and the goal was to
Speaker 1: create a way in which the user could load unauthorized
Speaker 1: apps onto their iPhone. On a technical level, what the
Speaker 1: hackers wanted to do was get administrative level access to
Speaker 1: the file systems of the iPhones operating system or iOS.
Speaker 1: That is what jail breaking is. It is dismantling or
Speaker 1: overcoming the restrictions placed on a piece of tech so
Speaker 1: that you can load whatever you want onto it and
Speaker 1: change it in whichever way you want. And in the
Speaker 1: early days the iPhone, it also meant you could potentially
Speaker 1: use an iPhone with a different carrier than whatever Apple's
Speaker 1: official partner was in that region. This is more frequently
Speaker 1: referred to as unlocking, so it's related to, but slightly
Speaker 1: different from, jail breaking. Sometimes the jail breaking process would
Speaker 1: allow you to unlock your phone, but they weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: always together. And while the term jailbreaking can apply to
Speaker 1: any walled garden ecosystem, more often than not you would
Speaker 1: encounter it in terms of Apple and specifically the iPhone
Speaker 1: and to a lesser extent, the iPad and the and
Speaker 1: the iPod Touch. I almost totally forgot what the iPod
Speaker 1: Touch was called, because it's been so long since I've
Speaker 1: seen an iPod and I think a big part of
Speaker 1: the reason why we associate this mostly with Apple is
Speaker 1: that Google, unlike Apple, when when they launched their Android
Speaker 1: phone the following year, Google decided to give users the
Speaker 1: option to load apps outside of the official Google App Store.
Speaker 1: Now that's called sideloading. So you're heading off to the
Speaker 1: side to load an app onto a device. You're not
Speaker 1: going through the official you know, Android Store, and sometimes
Speaker 1: you need to do that just for the purposes of
Speaker 1: developing an app. Right, So let's say that you are
Speaker 1: a developer. You're creating an app. The app is not
Speaker 1: ready for full rollout, so you're not gonna submit it
Speaker 1: to the app Store yet, but it's beyond the initial
Speaker 1: development phase and you want to run a beta test
Speaker 1: to make sure that the app is doing what it's
Speaker 1: supposed to do. So maybe you contact a relatively small
Speaker 1: number of folks to participate in the beta and they
Speaker 1: sideload the app. You send them like a direct link
Speaker 1: to where they can download the app and they can
Speaker 1: do that. Then you test out the app, You work
Speaker 1: out what the bugs are if there are any you're
Speaker 1: find it, and then once it's ready, then you can
Speaker 1: submit it to the official store. That happens a lot,
Speaker 1: but it does require that your testers have to go
Speaker 1: into their settings and allow it does. By default, you
Speaker 1: are not allowed to sideload apps, but you can change
Speaker 1: that feature and Android. And then there are some developers
Speaker 1: who just create apps that either they never submit to
Speaker 1: the App Store or maybe the apps got rejected for
Speaker 1: some reason, and in these cases, sideloading is really the
Speaker 1: only way users can access those applications. Google's message was, hey, y'all,
Speaker 1: this is risky, but you're all adults, so we're not
Speaker 1: gonna stop you from doing this, but we do want
Speaker 1: you to understand that it comes with potential consequences. You
Speaker 1: need to know that. So Google was saying that sideloading
Speaker 1: could lead to trouble, such as you know, you could
Speaker 1: end up installing malware on your Android device, and that
Speaker 1: does happen. But if you wanted the freedom it was
Speaker 1: yours to have, you just had to change a couple
Speaker 1: of settings on your phone. Apple, by contrast, said, the
Speaker 1: world out there is a scary place. There are bad
Speaker 1: people who will do bad things to your phone. And
Speaker 1: so we shall protect you because you do not know better.
Speaker 1: Trust in us. We know what you want before you do.
Speaker 1: Do not worry what lies outside the official app store,
Speaker 1: for nothing out there is worth your time, or something
Speaker 1: like that. I might be paraphrasing anyway, a lot of
Speaker 1: the hacker crowd felt that Apple's approach was very patronizing
Speaker 1: and very Ivory tower ish. And you know, hackers aren't
Speaker 1: super crazy about companies telling them what they can't do
Speaker 1: with their stuff. That pretty much goes directly against the
Speaker 1: hacker ethos. So you might wonder how long did it
Speaker 1: take before someone found a way around Apple's iOS protections
Speaker 1: that would allow you to install a new app on
Speaker 1: the iPhone? And the answer is eleven days approximately, So
Speaker 1: about a week and a half after the first iPhone launched,
Speaker 1: hackers created a way to bypass the walled garden. Uh
Speaker 1: one group of hackers that did this in that I'm
Speaker 1: of time, we're cheekily referring to themselves as the iPhone
Speaker 1: dev team, And initially they showed that through their process
Speaker 1: they could install custom ringtones and custom wallpapers on the iPhone,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, pretty small stuff, but a step
Speaker 1: something that you could not do if you just had
Speaker 1: an out of the box standard iPhone. Now there's no
Speaker 1: real point in going into how they did this because
Speaker 1: it gets extremely technical. Like some of the jail breaking
Speaker 1: processes for various iOS versions would be more than a
Speaker 1: hundred steps for you to complete in order to achieve
Speaker 1: the goal of jail breaking the phone. So it would
Speaker 1: be pointless for me to go through all of those.
Speaker 1: It would be meaningless for most of us, including me.
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't need to talk down to anyone.
Speaker 1: I would not understand what I was saying. I would
Speaker 1: just be reciting something. It would be as if I
Speaker 1: were saying something in a totally different language. And also,
Speaker 1: most of all that is a ale of it now,
Speaker 1: because you know, we're we're talking about a process that
Speaker 1: we see in all forms across data security, which is
Speaker 1: you get this see saw effect. So one moment, the
Speaker 1: hackers have figured out how to exploit a system, so
Speaker 1: the seesaw goes in their direction. The next moment, whatever
Speaker 1: company is behind the system ends up pushing out an
Speaker 1: update that addresses that vulnerability see sauce switches. Then the
Speaker 1: hackers get to work trying to crack that system. Switches again,
Speaker 1: and so on, and this back and forth just keeps
Speaker 1: on going. Pretty much, it will keep on going until
Speaker 1: whatever the company is it's making the thing stops making
Speaker 1: the thing. Um And of course some iOS updates would
Speaker 1: end up taking longer to crack than others. I believe
Speaker 1: that IO S fourteen, which is the most recent version,
Speaker 1: took the longest amount of time to crack if we
Speaker 1: ignore stuff like Apple TV, which took even longer. But
Speaker 1: I'm mostly focusing on iPhones here, and Apple tried to
Speaker 1: go a little bit scorched earth with their early response
Speaker 1: to to jail breaking. So the company aimed to brick
Speaker 1: phones that had been altered. First, it sent on a
Speaker 1: message that said, hey, you don't want to jail break
Speaker 1: your phone because it could affect its functionality and it
Speaker 1: could make it not function in the future. And then
Speaker 1: the company, our outright went out to try and make
Speaker 1: that happen by detecting and then breaking a phone that
Speaker 1: had been altered. And breaking means that the company essentially
Speaker 1: cuts off all functionality to the device and they render
Speaker 1: it no more useful than a brick. And actually you
Speaker 1: could argue it's less useful than a brick, because I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've tried to build afford with iPhones,
Speaker 1: but they are not stable. Hackers would release tools that
Speaker 1: would allow users to jail break their phones and then
Speaker 1: continue to update two newer versions of the iOS without
Speaker 1: having their phones get bricked in the process. US for
Speaker 1: some of those early ones, but again, this was constantly
Speaker 1: a seesaw. Apple would see how the hackers would respond
Speaker 1: and change their approach, and then the hackers would do
Speaker 1: the same. Now, the point that the hackers were aiming
Speaker 1: for was always the same. Their goal was always the same,
Speaker 1: which was to get that administrative access over the file system. Now,
Speaker 1: the method to do that would change depending upon what
Speaker 1: protections were in place, So again there's not much point
Speaker 1: in going through any of them in great detail because
Speaker 1: they would only be relevant to a specific iteration of iOS. Now,
Speaker 1: the very early jail break methodologies we're pretty obtuse if
Speaker 1: you were not technically savvy, chances are it would be
Speaker 1: two in the weeds for you to manage. And when
Speaker 1: I say you, I also mean me. I am I
Speaker 1: am certain After I've looked at just a few of
Speaker 1: the early methods, where I was reading the list of
Speaker 1: steps and everything, I would have looked at those instructions
Speaker 1: and said, yeah, no, this is too complicated. I'll just
Speaker 1: wait till Apple finally releases a snake game. But if
Speaker 1: you were more comfortable with code, and there are plenty
Speaker 1: of people who are, then it was totally doable. Some
Speaker 1: of the hackers would release instructions on how they managed
Speaker 1: to crack Apple's code. Others would just show proof that
Speaker 1: they had done it, like they would show the results,
Speaker 1: but they wouldn't explain how they did it. They would
Speaker 1: keep the method secret and that would, in their minds,
Speaker 1: hopefully prevent Apple from patching that vulnerability so quickly. Now,
Speaker 1: some hackers would go so far as to release tools
Speaker 1: that would do the jailbreaking for the user, and that
Speaker 1: would significantly simplify things. When the group Poneage Tool released
Speaker 1: the second version of their jailbreaking tool, this time it
Speaker 1: was targeting the iPhone three G, which I guess I
Speaker 1: should remind you was the second iPhone. They also introduced
Speaker 1: a tool called City that have been developed by someone else,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk more about that after we come act
Speaker 1: from this quick break. Okay, I left off with Sidia.
Speaker 1: Sidia is spelled c Y d I A and it
Speaker 1: served a few different purposes. For one thing, it was
Speaker 1: a facilitator for jail breaking, so it made it easier
Speaker 1: for users to jail break devices. But for another, it
Speaker 1: was a kind of forbidden app store. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: a way to find apps that were not covered in
Speaker 1: Apple's official app store, and it would allow you to
Speaker 1: download them. Actually, technically, Sidia came out before Apple had
Speaker 1: launched its App store, so for a while, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to download apps to your iPhone, the only way
Speaker 1: to do it was through Cidia or to hunt around
Speaker 1: in different hacker forms and find them yourself. But Sidia
Speaker 1: made that process much easier. So yeah, Sidia predated the
Speaker 1: iPhone app store by a short while, not like, not
Speaker 1: like by a significant amount, but by a month or so.
Speaker 1: And then Apple opened up its app store and had
Speaker 1: its quote unquote official approach where developers had to submit
Speaker 1: through Apple's process in order to get approved and have
Speaker 1: their app carried in the store. Now City was the
Speaker 1: brainchild of a hacker named Jay Freeman who used the
Speaker 1: handle Saric s A U r I K. He introduced
Speaker 1: Citia around two thousand eighth But, like I said, before
Speaker 1: the app store launched and Another hacker named George Hots
Speaker 1: a k A. Geo Hots or Geo Hot was unlocking
Speaker 1: in jail breaking phones too. He had first become known
Speaker 1: for not just software hacks, but actually opening up the
Speaker 1: original iPhone and changing the circuitry slightly. Uh. He did
Speaker 1: that using an eyeglasses screwdriver, a guitar pick, and a
Speaker 1: soldering iron, which meant that he could switch over the
Speaker 1: iPhone so that he would not have to use a
Speaker 1: T and T. He he switched it so you could
Speaker 1: use any simcard, and he was using a T Mobile simcards,
Speaker 1: so he could use the original iPhone on the T
Speaker 1: Mobile network, which was kind of a neat hack and
Speaker 1: it was something that a lot of people also ended
Speaker 1: up being interested in learning how to do. Another important
Speaker 1: tool in the early days of jailbreaking was jailbreak Meat
Speaker 1: two point oh. So there was the second version, obviously
Speaker 1: second full version of this tool, and it debuted a
Speaker 1: few years after the iPhone had come out. But this
Speaker 1: was a web based tool and that really simplified thinks.
Speaker 1: So to use it, all you would have to do
Speaker 1: is take your iPhone, use Safari. You would visit a
Speaker 1: specific website that hosted the jailbreak meat tool. There'd be
Speaker 1: a little button on your screen you click on that. Actually,
Speaker 1: you would technically swipe to unlock, and the site would
Speaker 1: handle the rest. It would initiate the process that would
Speaker 1: jail break your phone within a few minutes, and you
Speaker 1: would have administrator level access to your file system. And
Speaker 1: Apple took all jailbreaking attempts seriously, but jailbreak me two
Speaker 1: point oh was particularly vital for Apple to tackle because
Speaker 1: for the first time, users who had no real tech
Speaker 1: savvy in them could take advantage of a jailbreaking tool,
Speaker 1: which meant Apple could technically lose its tight grip on
Speaker 1: its carefully designed ecosystem. Now anyone could jail break their
Speaker 1: phone if they wanted to. So the company pushed out
Speaker 1: a security update pretty quickly that made the jail break
Speaker 1: me two point oh attack ineffective. But then we just
Speaker 1: go back to that seesaw approach. Apple would also try
Speaker 1: to use the law as a way to discourage jail breaking. Uh.
Speaker 1: The company argued that jail breaking violated copyright law, but
Speaker 1: the courts ruled the jailbreaking wasn't illegal and it might
Speaker 1: violate the end user license agree amant or you LA
Speaker 1: but you LA's aren't quite the same thing as legal documents,
Speaker 1: despite how companies often treat them as such. So jailbreaking
Speaker 1: is not illegal necessarily. I guess it depends on where
Speaker 1: you are. In the United States, it's not illegal, But
Speaker 1: jailbreaking has sort of had a decline now. This is
Speaker 1: mostly because Apple really pushes out updates pretty quickly these days,
Speaker 1: so the exploits don't remain viable for very long. So
Speaker 1: if you publish that you've found a way to jail
Speaker 1: break a phone, then the timer is on right because
Speaker 1: Apple researchers are going to be struggling to find a
Speaker 1: way to patch those vulnerabilities. But there are still people
Speaker 1: out there who are working on effectively jailbreaking iPhones, and
Speaker 1: some of them are white hat hackers. So these are
Speaker 1: people who are looking for vulnerabilities so that they can
Speaker 1: tell Apple and Apple can then patch those holes and
Speaker 1: keep the system protected. Some of them are, you know,
Speaker 1: either working for Apple directly or contracted with Apple. Some
Speaker 1: people are just claiming bug bounties. This is when a
Speaker 1: company offers up a reward if someone finds a vulnerability
Speaker 1: in their products. So you might come forward and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I found this vulnerability. Here's what I did. Here's the vulnerability.
Speaker 1: And then in return, the company says, thank you, here
Speaker 1: is a bucket full of cash because you just saved
Speaker 1: us untold amounts of money by pointing out this vulnerability.
Speaker 1: And then you have some black hat hackers out there
Speaker 1: who might be trying to jail break iPhones on behalf
Speaker 1: of an organization or a company or a government that
Speaker 1: would really like to be able to exploit the Apple
Speaker 1: user base. Of the NSO group out of Israel comes
Speaker 1: to mind here. That is a company that was looking
Speaker 1: to exploit a vulnerability within the iPhone ecosystem that it
Speaker 1: could then sell as a product to customers. Those customers
Speaker 1: typically were authoritarian governments. So not great. But one of
Speaker 1: the big reasons to jail break might end up not being,
Speaker 1: you know, important, It might be moot before much longer.
Speaker 1: Because we've recently seen court systems around the world push
Speaker 1: back against companies like Apple and arguing that the walled
Speaker 1: garden approach is inherently anti competitive and that companies should
Speaker 1: allow customers to use alternatives to the company store as
Speaker 1: it were now. If those policies become law, then companies
Speaker 1: like Apple will be legally bound, at least in some regions,
Speaker 1: to allow users to access other app stores besides the
Speaker 1: official one. Now, that's one of the big reasons Apple
Speaker 1: has been putting up such a tough legal battle recently
Speaker 1: to resist this trend, because alternatives would mean Apple would
Speaker 1: be potentially left out of that lucrative revenue loop that
Speaker 1: it currently occupies. Developers could potentially use alternatives to Apple's
Speaker 1: payments service, and Apple would no longer get automatic cut
Speaker 1: out of an app purchases. Okay, quick recap. When we're
Speaker 1: talking about jail breaking, we're really getting into the ethos
Speaker 1: of what it is to be a classic hacker. And
Speaker 1: the classical hacker is not necessarily interested in profiting off
Speaker 1: the system or stealing information or stealing money or anything
Speaker 1: like that. They're more interested in learning how stuff works
Speaker 1: and how they might be able to get stuff to
Speaker 1: do something other than what it was designed to do.
Speaker 1: They love the learning process and the sense of achievement
Speaker 1: they get when they figure out the system or how
Speaker 1: to make it do something unexpected. They are not necessarily malicious,
Speaker 1: though they often can be mischievous, and hackers frequently feel
Speaker 1: that any computer platform should be open to run any
Speaker 1: software that it's capable of running. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: systems should not be well hold off and locked away.
Speaker 1: So if a hacker buys a smartphone, the hacker probably
Speaker 1: wants to be able to load anything they want onto
Speaker 1: that phone without any restrictions. And it really comes down
Speaker 1: to control. Does the company that made the product control
Speaker 1: what you can do on it or does the owner
Speaker 1: who purchased the device have that control? And hackers typically
Speaker 1: think it should be the second camp. Apple feels the opposite. Now, finally,
Speaker 1: should you jail break your device? Well, I would actually
Speaker 1: advise against it unless you really know what you're doing.
Speaker 1: While jailbroken devices can frequently do lots of stuff that
Speaker 1: the bog standard version cannot do. Like there are people
Speaker 1: who jail broke their iPhones and were able to access
Speaker 1: things that the iPhone wouldn't be able to do for ages,
Speaker 1: like copy and paste, which is such a basic thing.
Speaker 1: And you think, well, you mean iPhones at one point
Speaker 1: didn't have copy paste. Yeah, once upon a time they didn't,
Speaker 1: and people complained about it, and the only people who
Speaker 1: were using copy and paste on iPhones were the hackers
Speaker 1: who had jailbroken their devices. However, even though you might
Speaker 1: be able to do stuff like that. It comes with
Speaker 1: a lot of risks. You might find your device has
Speaker 1: been bricked, or it might have been compromised by malware
Speaker 1: if you downloaded an app and it turns out it
Speaker 1: was hosting malicious code. So Apple was not lying when
Speaker 1: the company said that jailbreaking isn't safe. It is not safe. Now,
Speaker 1: if you know what you're doing, you can navigate jail
Speaker 1: breaking without it running, you know, into too much trouble.
Speaker 1: That is possible, but your return on investment might be
Speaker 1: pretty low these days. Still, the hackers out there who
Speaker 1: feel the circuitry they own should be able to do
Speaker 1: whatever it technically is capable of doing, that might be enough. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it for this tech stuff tidbits on jail breaking.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for that suggestion. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: That again was from Way Too Cold Mike on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Thanks again. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: cover on future episodes of Text Stuff, please reach out
Speaker 1: to me. The handle is text stuff HSW on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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