Wednesday, December 01, 2010

iPhone Jailbreaking Pros And Cons

Breaking your iPhone free of the death grip that Apple has over the device might be all the rage these days but is it a good idea? Does it actually put users at a great risks as Apple suggests? Kaspersky Lab Director of Global Research and Analysis Costin Raiu offers his thoughts in this exclusive video Q&A with Threatpost Editor Ryan Naraine.


My thoughts:

Mr. Naraine has a few spot on observation but to me many of his thoughts miss the mark. For instance the jailbreakme.com exploit that uses a PDF flaw to remotely jailbreak your phone. In no way is this going to make your phone any less secure than it already is. Obviously the flaw is there, jailbreaking isn't opening that flaw any more than it already is. The iPhone and iOS operating system have already been shown to be very insecure jailbreaking doesn't really open any doors that aren't there!

The second point I disagree with is that jailbreakers are less likely to upgrade to a new version of iOS or apply patches. Sure they don't want to lose their jailbreak, however devs are always working to break the newest version of the OS and most geeks want the latest greatest. So I'd say jailbreakers are more likely to update than other users. They might not apply these updates immediately but lets face it how many of us actually do?

One area I can agree with Mr. Naraine on is that some of the third party apps might not be as secure as those in the Apple App Store. This isn't to say that all the apps in the App Store are secure or that those 'unapproved' third party apps are malicious. Just that users need to take extra caution and be careful when using them.

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