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Cellphones Businesses Apple

iPhone Application Key Leaked 247

HighWizard writes with word from Engadget that the iPhone SDK Key has been leaked early. "We're not exactly sure how this all went down, but we trust Erica Sadun over at TUAW when she says that it appears that the iPhone's SDK key — which will probably be required by all 'official' third-party apps — has been leaked. Two different sites currently have the key posted, but it's all just for show until next month, when the SDK hits for real — and the code is undoubtedly changed."
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iPhone Application Key Leaked

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28, 2008 @11:58PM (#22217620)


         
  • Re:Bummer :-( (Score:4, Interesting)

    by webmaster404 ( 1148909 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @12:02AM (#22217638)
    Exactly, just look at game consoles. Just a few days ago they managed to find a way to run homebrew code on the Wii without a modchip. All DRM is quickly broken if there is enough interest. I still don't get why they do it, if I get a computer, I should be able to run whatever program I want on it, change the OS, overclock it ETC.
  • by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @01:06AM (#22218064) Homepage Journal

    Has anyone ACTUALLY seen someone in REAL LIFE with an iPhone?

    Four off the top of my head. Three coworkers and a friend from Canada. (He unlocked it to work with Rogers.) I could probably come up with more if I thought hard enough about it.

    In comparison, everyone I know who had a Windows Mobile phone ended up drop-kicking it and replacing with just a plain-jane phone. Biggest complaint? "At least I can make calls on this phone. Which is more than I can say for my Windows phone..."
  • by DECS ( 891519 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @01:13AM (#22218098) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft isn't selling Vista at retail at all. Even new PCs, which typically all come with whatever version of Windows Microsoft wants, have vastly outnumbered the sales of 100M Vista licenses Microsoft is counting. That means most new PCs sold in 2007 shipped with XP!

    As for the OP wondering where the iPhones are, if you live in the middle of nowhere, you might be seeing a diluted number of iPhones. Try going to a concert in a major US city and not spotting lots of them. An increasing number of the amateur porn mirror pics I've seen online are taken with iPhones. In other words, they're mostly in populated areas where affluent early adopter people live.

  • Re:Bummer :-( (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @01:24AM (#22218180)

    Just a few days ago they managed to find a way to run homebrew code on the Wii without a modchip. All DRM is quickly broken if there is enough interest.
    You must have a different definition of "quickly" than me. The Wii has been out for well over a year.
  • by the_wesman ( 106427 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @01:41AM (#22218294) Homepage
    I've seen a lot - I've got one - one of my close friends has one - her ex-boyfriend has one - several people (3 I can think of off the top of my head) I work with have them - I see them in the elevator - on the subway - in the airport - at parties - bars - I'm actually amazed how many people have them - and the diverse types of people, frankly.
  • by BitZtream ( 692029 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @01:45AM (#22218330)
    Not likely, where I work, we use public/private key pairs to sign all code the goes out the door. Each developer has their own key pair for doing internal work on components which must be signed to work in our system, and only myself (I'm the lead developer/buildmaster) and the CEO have the password to the master certificate. One of our developers COULD leak their key. At which point I would promptly point to the part of their contract which stipulates doing so is grounds for immediate termination.

    Considering that our development machines are on a physically seperate network with no direct internet access, there aren't many excuses which will fly if a developer claims virus/malware/accident. You have to go out of your way to let a key slip out.

    So, assuming apple has the same sort of security internally, and they'd have to if they plan on requiring digital sigs on iPhone apps, then its highly likely the 'leak' won't have 'access' to the key used in the final build since they'll likely be arrested if they go near the office.

    In my case fortunately our developers really don't have much of a reason to leak the keys anyway, the are used in very specific instances for a few very select and ... particular customers. The security precautions we take with the keys are actually very silly for what they are used for, but the point is, apple more than likely will know who leaked the key, and it >won't happen again since they'll never get another valid key and the leaked key will simply be revoked without any damage since no one has legitimately received any apps signed with it yet.
  • by Myria ( 562655 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @01:49AM (#22218356)
    The purported key is only 16 bytes. There is no current public-key algorithm capable of maintaining security at a 128-bit key size. If that's a legitimate key, it's definitely a symmetric key. Symmetric cryptography has the obvious problem that the device necessarily must have the key inside of it somewhere, meaning that a reverse engineer could find it.

    If Apple used a symmetric key to protect against unauthorized software, it would imply incompetence with cryptography. I highly doubt this is true. It's more likely that it's not.
  • Re:Bummer :-( (Score:2, Interesting)

    by amsr ( 125191 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @02:26AM (#22218556)
    Who says apple is going to prevent "free" applications. Just because they want to sign apps that go on the phone, doesn't mean you have to pay for them. They likely want to protect the network. In any case, very high quality freeware/shareware are a large part of the value of the mac and have been since its inception. I seriously doubt they would stand in the way of this on the iphone. Time will tell..
  • Re:Bummer :-( (Score:1, Interesting)

    by craagz ( 965952 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @03:00AM (#22218710) Homepage Journal

    if I get a computer, I should be able to run whatever program I want on it, change the OS, overclock it ETC


    If you overclocked a computer you will render useless the available faster computer. If you change the OS, you are switching the loyalties established by the computer company and the OS company.

    That is the reason why most warranties go void when you do any of the above.

    All things done in the name of protecting markets.
  • by LKM ( 227954 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @05:23AM (#22219354)
    (Sorry, this is going to be a somewhat lengthy rant which isn't directed solely at parent, but at other posts asking about what people see in the iPhone)

    I live in Switzerland, where the phone isn't even officially sold. I own an iPhone, I know six other people who own iPhones, and I've seen three people whom I don't know with iPhones on the street. So yeah, tons of people own iPhones, and they use them.

    Personally, the iPhone is the best cell phone I've ever owned. It's also the cheapest cell phone I've ever owned. I use my cell phone as an organizer. I use the calendar extensively, I write and receive a lot of SMS messages. I generally use smartphones. I've owned a P800, a Treo 650, and a P990i. These phones suck compared to the iPhone.

    For example, the P990i supports wifi - in theory. Actually using wifi means that you have to add each network you want to use to your list of networks (which involves going through a lengthy wizard where you tell the damn phone what specific setup the wifi network uses). This generally means that you have to create a second list of networks, because otherwise, you have wifi and umts in the same list, which means you never know whether the phone is actually using umts instead. So you create two lists, add wifi networks to the second list, tell the phone (or application, because sometimes that works on the application level and sometimes on the phone level) that you want to use the second list with the wifi network, then you connect to the network, and finally you can use the damn wifi network. After my P990i crashed half a year after I bought it and deleted all settings, I never bothered to go through this again. I simply avoided using wifi.

    On the iPhone, you open Safari. If it can find a wifi network you've already used, it'll use that. If not, it'll give you a list of networks it can see. You pick one. If it's protected, it asks for the password. It connects. And that's all there is to it.

    And don't get me started on how fucking abysimal the user interface on the P990i is. It's slow, with tons of crappy animations which add nothing to the UI other than preventing you from getting to where you want to be. The web browser on that thing is the worst piece of shit I've ever used. It's practically useless. Entering an appointment into the calendar actually takes around 20 taps with the stylus. In fact, it is so complicated that they added a second way of entering appointments using a shortcut menu entry, which takes a few taps less, but sometimes crashes or simply does not work at all. Oh, and when the phone crashes, it restarts and tels you that it had to restart in order to improve functionality. The phone crashes, and then it insults your intelligence, too.

    The Treo was better - at least the UI was not designed by blind monkey on acid. Unfortunately, it had other issues, such as the fact that there is pretty much no multitasking. For example, if you open a site in the browser (which is better than the one in the P990i, but still sucks), get an SMS, write an answer to the SMS and go back to the browser, the state is lost and you start fresh.

    I heard Windows Mobile was slightly better, but the last time I used it (admittedly a few years ago), it seemed to me the user interface was basically akin to using Windows 95 on a really really small screen.

    In comparison to every other phone I've ever used, the iPhone is a breath of fresh air. It works the way you expect, it's damn fast, the browser is actually so usable that I often simply use the iPhone instead of going to my computer. The screen is beautiful and large, which makes it possible to watch movies during train rides. It synchronizes perfectly well with all computers I own, and when I start listening to a podcast on the iPhone, my iPod picks up where I stopped listening, and I can restart exactly where I was when I go jogging.

    Everything about the iPhone is well thought out, and for once, I actaully like using my cell phone.

    So screw the "emo demographic". People use the iPhone because it's quite simply one of the best - possibly the best - cell phones available, despite the fact that you can't install applications without jailbreaking it first.

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