"Apple Is Not Fighting Jailbreaking": Wait, What?
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I also want to take exception to Thom's statement that Apple "fought hard to maintain jailbreaking as an illegal activity". It might not have been "[a] figment of our collective imagination", but without a shred of support provided in the post, it might very well have been. And I don't think Apple care too much about its legality. Yes, we love to poke fun of how litigious Apple are, but I can't remember them picking a fight that they don't have a good chance of winning. Certainly the folks at Apple realize they won't be able to stop the practice of jailbreaking by pulling a RIAA and carpet bombing jailbreakers with lawsuits. As I said, if Apple wanted to prevent jailbreaking, they would have come up with an effective technical measure to do so, not a legal one.
iOS already does this. The device won't accept an iOS image unless it has been signed by Apple. Not only that, but iTunes now "verifies with Apple" over the Internet that you are allowed to install the update before proceeding. Not only that, but all binaries including App Store apps and even debug builds of apps produced by the iOS SDK must be signed.
I think Apple is using all the "effective technical measures" available to them. The only way to run code not signed by Apple is to exploit a vulnerability, and e-fuses wouldn't patch the vulnerabilities that allow jailbreaking. At best e-fuses would allow Apple to brick a jailbroken device if the owner was foolish enough to attempt an OS upgrade. The only way I could see them making iOS tighter is rewriting the whole thing in a safer language than C to cut the number of vulnerabilities.
[strikethrough] That has not been my experience, although I admit I haven't jailbroken an iPhone in quite a while. But this used to be how PwnageTool worked - it unzips a stock iOS image, modifies it, packages it back up, and lets you install it on your phone through iTunes.
I'm absolutely certain that this is something Apple can detect and could have prevented if they wanted to. [/strikethrough]
Also, e-fuses and trusted computing thingamajigs can be used to constantly keep the integrity of the core OS components (bootloader, kernel, launchd, etc.) in check and either brick the device or, more likely, to refuse to boot or continue running the OS until it has been restored. So, no, I disagree that Apple are using all the effective technical measures available to them. Apple are using all the measures that they think is worth investing resources in, given the magnitude of the problem (which seems to be right now tiny to nonexistent).
They do prevent you from downgrading your iOS image by refusing to authenticate old versions on install. I find it hard to interpret this as simply "downgrading is not supported" as Gruber does, as it is an active step on Apple's part to stop you from doing something. Installing Linux on my Macbook is also supported by Apple, but that doesn't mean they actively alter my Macbook's boot process to stop me from doing it.
You may argue otherwise, but from where I stand, preventing downgrading and thus preventing jailbreaking has been a (fortunate for Apple?) side effect, rather than a goal.
The firmware install process includes a phone-home procedure that verifies with Apple that the device is authorized to install that firmware.
Once a new firmware image is released, Apple just stops issuing signatures for the previous releases and devices can no longer install it.
The procedure is vulnerable to a replay attack, and so Cydia offers a stand-in replacement for Apple's authorization server, but users who want to downgrade have to be savvy enough to save their auth token ahead of time.
Jobs' confirmation of an existing "kill switch" sounds like a technical counter-measure to me: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3358134/Apples-Jobs-co...
The recent patent submission to track 'suspicious activity' seems like a nice detection system that can be used to flip the kill switch when kids try to segfault the iOS, in order to find an attack vector for a jailbreak.
I think Apple may be keeping the status quo for a while longer, to secure it's position in the smartphone market, to avoid a backlash, to benefit from free vulnerability disclosures by the jailbreak community and to focus it's development efforts to more important tasks at hand.
Apple is indeed not openly fighting jailbreakers, but it's in their interest to keep the software under control. Whenever you upgrade from a jailbroken phone, all the unsigned apps disappear, along with the data contained. Given their desire to control the application ecosystem (grossly benefiting from all the developer signups and app sales), if the percentage of jailbroken iPhones ever becomes a blip on the radar, they will take repressive action to disincentivize the user (AppStore lock-out, kill-switch) and jailbreak tinkerers (suspicious activity reports).
I don't find the unlocking US phones in Europe a problem, because legislation here often requires the phones to be unlocked from the subscription plan. iPhones can be bought unlocked at a slightly higher (unsubsidized) price.
The kill switch exists, very true, but other stores have it just the same: in particular Android Marketplace has a kill switch too.
The copyright submission does show that Apple considers jailbreaking illegal, but that was NOT what people are discussing. Everyone agrees that is Apple's stance. The question is if Apple should "look the other way", with a camp saying they already seem not to care much and others saying they are doing everything they can to stop jailbreaking. So again: nobody is arguing about Apple's official stance, but how hard they should pursue it.
Finally the recent patent is just that: a patent. It is not something that has actually been implemented, and we don't even know if they want to implement it. But the bottom line is that in a discussion if Apple has or has not fight jailbreaking, we are talking 2007-now. Arguing that Apple may in the _future_ implement something like that would be bad but not relevant.
That is not to say I think your arguments may be wrong. I agree in the future Apple may fight jailbreaking more strongly, we don't know. But the discussion is not about how likely it is or isn't a certain future, but how Apple has acted _so_far_.
And the kill switch in questions is one "that allows Apple to remotely delete malicious or inappropriate applications stored on the device". One that they haven't yet used, I might add, unlike some other mobile OS vendors. It's not a nefarious device to prevent jailbreaking.
I'm not arguing that it's not in Apple's interest to prevent jailbreaking. I'm not arguing that it is not that they are not making it easy to jailbreak iOS. All I'm saying is that it doesn't look like they are actively fighting jailbreaking. All the hurdles to jailbreaking thus far seem to be coincidental rather than the goal.
What? There is a link to an article that very well summarizes the levels of FUD Apple raised to in order to maintain jailbreaking illegal ("Exposing children to age-inappropriate content", "Limitation on ability to innovate", "Cellular network impact") The only thing they missed is Hitler.
Apple definitely goes for the low hanging fruits: any avenue that is relatively simple to fix gets fixed. And obviously anything that is a serious security flaw gets fixed.
And, despite how much the hackers may hate it, Apple has (and has always had) a philosophy where they do not care much for side-effects, or annoying a minor niche of jailbreakers. What I mean is that, if you find a way to hack your way around Apple's system, Apple doesn't care, but at the same time if/when Apple is going to upgrade the system or make changes you can't expect _any_ effort by Apple to not disturb your hack. That means they don't care about downgrading, and they don't care if an upgrade makes the jailbreak not work: that's your problem.
How much further than that they go? So far I haven't see much. They could have really pursued it further. And maybe one day they will, but not so far.
I suspect that so long as jail breaking stays at or below 10% of iPhones, Apple will tolerate it. If there is anything which starts pushing jail breaking towards being the norm rather than the exception I suspect we'd see them increase their efforts to prevent it.
And there has been no evidence to suggest that they are going actively doing this, thought they still might be.
Apple collects a nice sum of money for every iPhone sold and does not care whether that was carrier subsidized and whether said carrier now makes a loss due to the fact that the phone was jailbroken and unlocked and used one a different network.
I guess the point is that updates which fix vulnerabilities (which are the only way to jailbreak) can never be evidence the Apple is fighting jailbreaking. Apple will always fix vulnerabilities, everyone always should.