The Apple Channel

August 07, 2008

A number of news sites and blogs, such as Apple Insider, MacRumors.com and Ars Technica have reported on iPhone's supposed 'kill switch,' a secret application blacklist that allegedly allows Apple to remotely deactivate and delete apps from users's iPhones, citing Jonathan Zdziarski, a reported iPhone forensics expert as a source.

The controversy arose around recently deleted apps such as alleged tethering app NetShare and the infamous $1,000 'I Am Rich' app.

Here's what Jonathan Zdziarski himself says, in a later post on his personal Web site:

So I post one little comment to a geek blog site about an "unauthorized apps" list downloaded by the iPhone, and every wanna-be-watergate journalist in the northern hemisphere emails me with conspiracy theories.

Allow me to set the record straight.

The location cache on the iPhone, located in /var/root/Library/Caches/locationd/, contains (among other things), a cache of unauthorized applications and a URL to a page on Apple's servers where it is apparently downloaded from time to time. That's all we know - nothing more. We do not know whether this mechanism is active, or what exactly it does. I haven't even bothered disassembling the firmware, because I didn't think anyone but "us geeks" would be interested. It might vaporize applications. It might simply prevent them from using the GPS. It might do nothing except upset the privacy advocates who don't like their iPhone calling home. For all we know, it could trigger world war three, or it could cause some computer somewhere to spit out recipes for buttermilk pancakes.