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Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

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Re: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

#41

Post by rsynnott »

gte910h wrote: post #26
delinka wrote: post #21

The kind of control Apple seeks (to what purpose is irrelevant) is doomed to fail. You simple cannot control a device once it's in the possession of an 'adversary' (which in this context seems to be the owner of the device). Once the attacker (again, the owner of the phone who wants to jailbreak) has possession of the phone, he has complete control over it. I wonder if Apple has this internal posture that they should…

You assume apple overly cares about jailbreaking. I feel they wish it were impossible, but knowing that it isn't, just want to make it difficult enough 'normal people' don't do it and start breaking things on the phone and not understand their jailbreaking is what broke things. Hell, their AT&T contract was probably the only reason they got super up in arms about it anyhow. The reason Apple closes the security loopho…

> Notice they have a pretty effective iBooks test

Well, it's not that effective; it was worked around within days of showing up. Interestingly, to my knowledge, Google's similar check to prevent rooted devices playing movie rentals hasn't been worked around yet.

Re: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

#42

Post by rsynnott »

maqr wrote: post #38
tjogin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comex and others are finding bugs, and Apple are fixing them. Not because Apple are irrational control freaks, but because the bugs they find and use to jailbreak the devices are extremely serious security holes . To not fix them would be incredibly irresponsible.

That's only really true of the remotely exploitable ones like jailbreakme. DFU mode exploits aren't a security threat.

Well, they are to a lesser extent; they allow an attacker with physical access (a spouse or colleague, say) to compromise your device.

Defending against physical access-based exploits is likely always going to be ultimately futile, though.

Re: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

#43

Post by ghshephard »

rimantas wrote: post #35
pavel_lishin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention, it may solve their jailbreak problem, at least temporarily.

I am pretty sure Apple is capable to solve jailbreak problem temporarily themselves.

Recent history proves that Apple is not capable of solving the jail breaking problems with their current security organization. If they were, then their Operating Systems wouldn't be broken so quickly.

Re: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

#44

Post by Xuzz »

conradev wrote: post #39
daimyoyo wrote: post #8

Jailbreakme is an amazingly elegant tool. Although I seriously doubt they will, Apple should definitely hire him. His products show that he understands design as well as anyone on their payroll now. That combined with his obvious coding skills make him the ideal Apple engineer.

> 'His products show that he understands design as well as anyone on their payroll now.' He designed none of the interface. > '... his obvious coding skills ...' A lot of the time, a person's coding skills are judged by how readable their code is, and how well they utilize SCM. Also, to be an Apple engineer you want extensive experience with Objective-C. https://github.com/comex/star_ Now I don't mean to say comex is…

He didn't design the interface (Apple did; it's a clone of the App Store, and I guess I designed some of the iPad UI), but he did work very hard to ensure that the user experience was great. There was quite a bit of discussion about that, even: comex spent months porting unionfs for little benefit (right now) than being able to install Cydia without rebooting, so it could look like an App Store installation.

Re: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

#45

Post by dmooray »

rimantas wrote: post #33

JailbreakMe’s sophistication is on par with that of Stuxnet No kidding…

It really is, if you have the skills to analyze it you should do it, you'll be surprised.

Edit: Forgot to add the link to the source code https://github.com/comex/star_

Re: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

#46

Post by Xuzz »

rsynnott wrote: post #42
maqr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only really true of the remotely exploitable ones like jailbreakme. DFU mode exploits aren't a security threat.

Well, they are to a lesser extent; they allow an attacker with physical access (a spouse or colleague, say) to compromise your device. Defending against physical access-based exploits is likely always going to be ultimately futile, though.

Actually, not really. From what I know, the keychain security hasn't been broken, except through brute forcing the passcode. While that's usually possible for the standard 4-digit passcode, it's not always possible. Jailbreaking is a necessary step to get the access necessary to brute force, but it doesn't magically break open the device for full access. (However, I am not an expert at this. I've talked with NerveGas (http://www.iosresearch.org/), but he's the person who really knows the most about that kind of stuff.)

Re: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

#47

Post by sjs »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #20
daimyoyo wrote: post #8

Jailbreakme is an amazingly elegant tool. Although I seriously doubt they will, Apple should definitely hire him. His products show that he understands design as well as anyone on their payroll now. That combined with his obvious coding skills make him the ideal Apple engineer.

Not to mention, it may solve their jailbreak problem, at least temporarily.

I never understand this sentiment. Jailbreak tools thrive on the knowledge that there's always another flaw out there waiting to be discovered. How would comex rid Apple's entire development process of error?

Plus, if he jailbreaks devices because he believes people should be free to do with their hardware as they please why on earth would he effectively join the dark side?

Re: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

#48

Post by Xuzz »

ghshephard wrote: post #43
rimantas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure Apple is capable to solve jailbreak problem temporarily themselves.

Recent history proves that Apple is not capable of solving the jail breaking problems with their current security organization. If they were, then their Operating Systems wouldn't be broken so quickly.

I think the issue is not their security team, who seem to do quite a good job securing iOS (which I'd consider one of, if not the most, secure consumer operating systems out there). The issue is that securing an OS is hard. It's hard to make it that someone with physical access to the device cannot just run code on it, which is what jailbreaking (in its purest form, on iOS devices) is.

Re: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

#49

Post by thematt »

drcube wrote: post #19

I have no clue how there is even a question about the legality of using your own hardware for whatever you want. I could "crash cell phone towers" with my car, but that doesn't give Ford the right to weld my hood shut. Seriously, how is this acceptable to anyone?

I would venture to say that the people who make the laws don't understand technology in the least. Think about your average parent or grandparent who equates AOL (or the Internet Explorer icon) to being "the internet". Now try to get them to understand a concept like jailbreaking, it's a daunting prospect, technology is emerging and changing at a rate faster than they can possibly comprehend. Society is asking them to make judgement calls about something they're not the least bit qualified to...and yet they're doing it anyways.

Re: Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple

#50

Post by alanh »

Ugh. “Obsessive control”? “Obsessive”? It’s a (very smart and seemingly unbeatable) strategy to limit user actions on these devices to known-safe actions, to prevent users from e.g. changing how the system itself works. It keeps down things like: User confusion, malware potential, customer support, third-party developer testing (heterogenous devices), etc.

I hate when bullshit business rags ascribe a quality like “obsession” (with the connotation of OCD or some sort of mental imbalance) to a booming business like Apple. As if they know better in this matter, despite the way Apple’s competitors in the market are making crazy little money in comparison…

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