Slashdot reported last week on research published by Swiss iPhone developer Nicolas Seriot about security holes in unjailbroken – that’s UNjailbroken – iPhones that could potentially compromise email accounts, browser history and even keytaps held in cache. The closed and unmodifiable nature of the stock iPhone OS means that malware could be carried by any app: even one legitimately purchased and downloaded from the App Store. 

In a talk on iPhone privacy in Geneva, Seriot described how a malicious application could harvest personal data on a non-jailbroken iPhone (PDF) without using private APIs. The presentation makes several suggestions to Apple on how to make the native iPhone environment more secure. For one thing, Seriot asserts that the keyboard cache oniPhones should be a OS service rather than being easily available to any app. He also recommends that the WiFi connection history be better hidden, and that the App Store reviews process be expanded to search for potential misuse of data. 

Seriot also makes the case that jailbroken iPhones can actually be more secure than stock iPhones, for the simple reason that jailbreakers have access to firewall software. The iPhone worms that were in the news not too long ago made headlines because they attacked jailbroken iPhones, but only those which still had the default SSH password. Once secured and running a firewall, jailbroken devices are harder to break into remotely than non-jailbrokeniPhones. This, of course, clearly contradicts Apple’s position that jailbroken devices are more vulnerable, and so may encounter resistance in the mainstream industry press. 

Users of all iPhones – jailbroken and not – should be wary of programs from untrustworthy developers, according to Seriot: especially professionals like like attorneys, doctors, finance officers who are legally bound to safeguard the privacy of data under their control. Interestingly, he also asserts that user reviews in the App Store are crucial, since customer experiences could save others from attack or validate the integrity of a program. After the recent scandal about faked reviews on the App Store, Apple would do well to keep better control of user feedback: as a security measure, if for no other reason.

(via TheiPhoneSpot.net)

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Steven Troughton-Smith has jailbroken the Palm Pre while at WWDC in San Francisco.

Well, success I gave up Tuesday eve because I couldn’t get the device into restore mode no matter what I did, but on Wednesday morning I figured it out: you have to hold the volume-up button while the device is off before plugging it into USB, and from there you can use Palm’s firmware flashers to do whatever you like with it. As the device can run unsigned firmware (!!!) I was easily able to hack out the activation check, and get up and running and enable the root shell. In that respect, I may just have the first jailbroken Pre in existence.

Troughton-Smith says that for hacking, the Pre is incredible. It runs unsigned firmware, has root shell over USB, its entire UI and all apps are written in javascript, and you run write C/C++ native Linux apps.

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Skype for iPhone has been updated to version 1.0.2 and now warns that jailbroken phones are not supported.

iClarified reader Francois reports that “upon launching the new app, there is warning saying: “This version of Skype is only supported on unmodified iPhone OS 2.2. Quick tests on my jailbroken iPhone 2G showed me it still works anyway…” You can find a screenshot of the warning below.

It is likely that Skype has included this warning due to the many incompatibilities with jailbroken applications that do not use MobileSubstrate. You can find more information on how to correct these problems and why they happen here

Whats New in This Version:
- Improved support for calling phone numbers that don’t have a country code
- Improved error handling when making calls to landlines and mobiles, which previously may have failed if you had a monthly subscription
- Resolved a problem with new account creation, which caused customers to be redirected to an incorrect web page, when making a purchase
- Fixed a problem, which caused the application to crash, when tapping a contact image (avatar) within a chat.

Skype 1.0.2 for iPhone can be downloaded free from the Apple App Store.

(via iClarified.com)

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The Cydia Store for Jailbroken iPhone Applications is now open with its very first package for sale.

The Cydia Store currently supports Facebook and Google as login accounts. You can take a look at some screenshots below and we will be posting a tutorial soon.

The very first package for sale is Cyntact an app that shows profile pics in your contact list. The app costs 1.00 dollar to purchase.

Update*: You can see the whole purchase process in this tutorial…

saurik: @TekkDave The Cydia Store will support PayPal, but not until next week: initially I’m using Amazon Payments. (Many people want/need PayPal.)

saurik: >@micaheljcaboose Yeah, when I say “late” I really mean it: while it /is/ technically Saturday here I tend to say I live on Japanese time. ;P

saurik: @Iphonegig While I doubt most themes will be charged for I know a few large design houses wanted to do really professional themes for money.

saurik: @hotcereal If this isn’t released in another hour and a half (5AM PST) I’m going to be super sad. Really, I want even much sooner than that.

saurik: @blued888 No, I suck :(. I am still working on it, and it’s even after 5AM. I am trying to move everything to production, and ran into pain.

saurik: @fusenuk The first package I am selling is DRM-free. I intend to work with the existing commercial applications to handle their current DRM.

saurik: @stewling This is an upgrade to Cydia, both client and website, to support payment processing. This actually /helps/ the case against Apple.

saurik: @blackforce I just rushed the completion of Google Login support (I was just going with Facebook) as too many people hate Facebook. Soon!

saurik: @DoGudSound This release is actually going to support both. When I release comments/ratings the non-Facebook experience will be non-awesome.

saurik: @Steaps Comments and ratings will be out soon: I just want to think through scalability one more time (I don’t want it to kill payments ;P).

saurik: @Jglaus The Cydia Store is a feature of the new Cydia. If you don’t have Cydia yet, you will need to use QuickPwn. http://tinyurl.com/7wkmt2

saurik: @PwnZone I have a schedule set for the first few weeks, in order of difficulty, as I add features. After that, users will be able to submit.

saurik: @geowarrior I am going to work on PayPal support for next week. (I did Amazon first as PayPal has a worse experience and is more expensive.)

(via AppleiPhoneSchool.com & iClarified.com)

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iPhone Developer, KennyTM has released another jailbreak app on Cydia for jailbroken iPhone users which adds another row (a 5th row) to iPhone’s virtual keyboard.

The jailbreak app is aptly called 5-Row QWERTY Keyboard.

KennyTM is the developer of one of our favorite jailbreak app hClipboard, which in our opinion is the best “Copy and Paste” solution for the iPhone.

KennyTM’s 5-Row QWERTY Keyboard adds another row of keys to iPhone’s virtual keyboard.

As you can see from the screenshot below, it adds a row of numbers to iPhone’s Qwerty keyboard like you have on the computer keyboard.

Tapping on the arrow button in the second row (which is used to turn caps lock on) gives you access to the symbols (such as !, @ etc) which are again arranged in the same order as those on the computer keyboard.

After you have installed 5-Row QWERTY Keyboard on your jailbroken iPhone using Cydia. You can enable the 5th row by going to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> International Keyboards and swiping your finger to turn On 5 Row QWERTY keyboard (I observed that it was enabled by default).

Once it is enabled, you can switch to the 5 Row Qwerty keyboard by tapping on the Globe button.

This is a cool hack but the keys are adjusted to fit the additional row in the available space so the keys are quite cramped if you compare the spacing available in the original keyboard. So it might not be convenient for folks with thick fingers.

(via iPhoneHacks.com)

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Well, it seems that I have missed a very cool new feature in Cydia. When you are on the Home option (on the lower menu bar) in Cydia, you get a menu with options such as Featured Packages, More Packages Source, F.A.Q…etc. If you select the Featured Packages option, you get a nice list of the featured applications (sponsored, free, commercial…etc). Everything seems normal but, wait until you select one of the apps…things get all crazy!  Read more…

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OK - Mini vMac is really cool and brought a HUGE smile to my face… Totally reminds me of when I was a kid and our old II and SE etc. I got it working on my iPhone running OS 7.0.1, 7.5.5 and 6.0.8. Check out the developers website here. You can install by adding apt.namedfork.net/iphone to your Cydia repositories.

How to Use:

Tap with two fingers to toggle screen size.
Swipe up with two fingers to show the keyboard, down to hide it.
Swipe left with two fingers to insert disks.
Swipe right with two fingers for settings.

Where to get the .ROM file and .dsk files

I got the vMac.ROM file from here: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bit/6458/vMac.html
I got .dsk from here: http://www.geocities.com/basicman10549/

Settings

Swipe right with two fingers to show the settings dialog and change the virtual keyboard layout and opacity.

On the bottom of the settings view, there are Interrupt and Reset buttons.

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Rip Dev has announced a new version of Installer.app for the iPhone and promised rapid updates to get it in shape as soon as possible.

What’s new or fixed in this update…

- Added user-driven ratings. We encourage you to submit your votes for various packages. Once more data will be collected (in a few days), that will be reflected on the Featured page.
- SpringBoard is no longer terminated after the software was installed or removed.
- Proxies are (again) supported. The support was broken after we moved to libcurl.
- Introduced download timeouts (again) that were disabled after the move to libcurl.
- Reworked many parts of the engine in an effort to get rid of the occasional GUI stalls.
- If a particular source fails to update, it will be moved to “disabled” state for 6 hours and will not be included in the all sources refresh process. The disabled state is listed as the source icon with a red “stop” sign over it. This is done to prevent unnecessary stalls at the sources refresh if one of the sources goes offline for whatever reason. If you’d like to retry it before 12 hour interval, open its info and hit Refresh button there.
- Removed customInfo support as it was mostly used for unnecessary ads that were disturbing many people. These pages are normally reachable from the “More Info” link.
- Much better error reporting. Forget these “error 3″s and such. The descriptions are much more human readable now. And for script errors, it will show an actual script command that caused an error.
- Installer will prevent iPhone/iPod touch from sleeping when it’s downloading or installing something.
- The app icon badge should behave better now.
- Lots of smaller fixes and optimizations I won’t list.

(via RipDev.org)

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