[frdmfghtr]

In out Mac world, we live in relative safety from trojans and virii thanks to a combination of good technology and smart users. Yet in the iPhone world, some will apply hacks and patches to jailbreak the iPhone.

What is it about the iPhone that will drive otherwise careful and sensible Mac users to trust code from essentially unknown sources to jailbreak/unlock their iPhone? We get software off the Internet for our Macs, but can use trusted packages to watch for nefarious activity (Little Snitch, packet sniffers, etc.), scan for viruses/malware (ClamXAV) and otherwise protect ourselves.

Or, perhaps more appropriately, why do you trust these various sources of hacks and code? How do you know they aren't mining your notes, calendar, recent call list, voicemail, and/or address book entries?

I ask this because recently I ran iJailbreak on my 8 GB and new 16 GB iPhones. I played for a few minutes, then did a full iTunes-based restore to a virgin state on the 16 GB unit, not really trusting the various sources of iPhone software enough to try them out. The 8 GB unit is going to get tested with a prepaid SIM this weekend then put up on the eBay block.

I suppose that, if there was any malware being spread on the iPhone "in the wild," we would hear about it pretty quickly, the same way we would if regular Mac software was found to be bogus.

Feeling ponderous this evening...

[Tomchu]

- The source code for many of the utilities is available.
- There are thousands of people doing it -- if there was any data mining going on, you can bet that there'd be a huge stink raised about it in a matter of hours.
- If you understand exactly what's being done at each stage (jailbreak, activate, unlock), there's no reason to worry.