Jailbreaking iPhones could lead to ‘catastrophic result’

Apple is currently lobbying the Copyright Office to deny a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to legalize jailbreaking (using apps not approved by apple). Here’s what Apple has to say:

Taking control of the BBP software would be much the equivalent of getting inside the firewall of a corporate computer — to potentially catastrophic result… The technological protection measures were designed into the iPhone precisely to prevent these kinds of pernicious activities, and if granted, the jailbreaking exemption would open the door to them

I guess that Apple is referring to an hypothetical malware that would wait until it infects millions of iPhone before activating itself to launch some kind of attack to overwhelm the system. While this is technically possible, it’s also quite a remote possibility, and even then, it seems like something that should be defended against at the cell tower level.

In the computer world, it would be equivalent to having Microsoft locking down Windows and approving every Windows Applications so that malware could be stopped. Sure, but is that what we want? The infrastructure should be able to defend itself, otherwise, what prevents a theoretical attack, make with a bunch of very cheaply made devices? Think of it as wireless “bomblets”.