While some are applauding the simplest jailbreak option to ever be released for the iPhone, jailbreakme.com has also exposed a potentially dangerous security hole in Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) device lineup.
Most jailbreaks for the iPhone have required a third-party app, but with jailbreakme.com an iPhone user can simply visit the site and jailbreak their device with ease. iPhone users jailbreak their phones for all kinds of reasons, but mostly to use their device with another carrier and remove some of the app and data usage restrictions that come standard with the iPhone. Until now, jailbreaking typically required a more lengthy process that was fraught with problems.
This new approach, according to Daring Fireball exploits a hole in the iPhone’s PDF-viewing engine. Any web site that can take advantage of Apple’s proprietary PDF rendering engine can apparently get behind the iPhone’s security architecture and run code at will.
The most ironic part in all of this is that Apple’s steadfast resistance to all things created by Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE), which makes the widely used Acrobat PDF reader, could be at least partially to blame. After all, it’s Apple’s own PDF rendering engine that malicious hackers can now use to circumvent the entire security framework of the iPhone.
iPhone security hole exposed by jailbreak
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