Cryptosmith

Cousin Jon sent me this Wired link: how to bypass iPhone’s 3GS encryption using jailbreaking tools. I haven’t paid serious attention to the iPhone (AT&T hasn’t had a strong signal in my town) but crypto bypass always gets my attention.

In fact, the weakness has nothing to do with protecting personal information on an iPhone. It’s all about third parties: Apple, the cell provider, and possibly an employer who provides/manages the iPhone.

If you’re not troubled by being limited to the iPhone Apps Store, then the threat’s relatively small, especially compared to desktop systems. Moreover, I doubt we’ll see real iPhone viruses as long as most people are happy with Apple’s app restrictions.

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According to the specs, my Palm Treo has a built-in GPS as part of the phone package. I was truly annoyed to find out that there’s no way to make use of that capability.

Yes, GPS vendors should be scared by iPhone. But I expect they’re going to get killed anyway by generic cell phones and Palm Treo-like devices. They generally have the mechanism built-in as part of the 911 call response mechanism.

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