The iPhone jailbreak 4 is legal in the US but that hasn’t stopped Apple from investigating new ways to stop users from cracking open iOS. The latest weapon in its anti-jailbreaking arsenal appeared over the weekend, a patent proposed as a way to protect iPhone owners from thieves and other ne’er-do-wells. But conveniently for Apple, it could also be an iPhone jailbreak killer…
The Apple patent, filed in February but published at the end of last week, is catchily entitled “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorised Users of an Electronic Device”. It describes a way of deploying countermeasures in cases of “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking or removal of a SIM card”.
The responses to an unauthorised use detailed in the patent include activating the iPhone camera, snapping a geotagged imaged and uploading it to a remote server. There’s also the option to save sensitive data to a remote server (possibly MobileMe) and wipe the device.
Plenty of the Apple patent isn’t related to the iPhone 4 jailbreak (or future iPhone jailbreak solutions). There’s lots of detail dedicated to erasing sensitive information in the event of theft (“credit card information, social security information, home addresses…”).
But other parts of the patent make it clear that killing off iPhone jailbreaking is a big part of Apple’s motivation. It says: “‘Jailbreaking’ of an electronic device can generally refer to tampering with the device to allow a user to gain access to digital resources that are normally hidden and protected from users…in some embodiments, an unauthorised user can be detected if is determined that the electronic device is being jailbroken…”
Other elements in the patent propose a seriously wide range of measures to allow Apple to counteract those nasty old unauthorised users and iPhone 4 jailbreak lovers. They include using the accelerometer to detect if the phone is on the move, a heartbeat sensor and voice-printing to detect whether an unauthorised user has got hold of the phone.
It’s by no means certain that Apple will implement this patent but there’s obviously potential for things to go wrong. Actively hunting down users who’ve use an iPhone jailbreak on their phone and activating countermeasures would bring oodles of bad publicity.
Let us know what you make of this Apple patent. Could it really take such drastic moves to fight future iPhone jailbreak attempts? And would you actually welcome it?
Out TBC | £TBC | Apple (via PatentVest)
