Robin Hood was a thug.
.............The
only thing Dangerous about Jailbreaking is not researching it. Im glad the n00bs are getting this
big scary virus. Maybe they'll look before they leap next time. It's not hard to read into a subject these days, google is a wonderful resource
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Sorry. The really dangerous part of jailbreaking is that you become part of a community of jailbreakers, many, not to say, most, of whom did not research it. You become part of a hostile neighborhood. You become part of a population that includes the rogues, thugs, bullies, and naifs.
Apple knew what it was doing. It understood that "open" devices are dangerous, that they are targets for rogues, that once compromised, they are bad neighbors. Instead of the permissive strategy adopted by the Internet, it elected a more restrictive one, not completely restrictive but much more so than the personal computer or the Internet.
They might have chosen an even more restrictive policy, one that would have resisted jailbreaking, but then it would have been a different product, not open to all of the one hundred thousand apps. Apple understood that successful products invite attack. It also understood that a secure user interface is necessary but not sufficient; one must also have a secure network interface and a secure application program interface, much more difficult problems.
One of the things that many jailbreak program suites add to the network interface is SSH, by definition, a "secure" interface, but one that, of necessity, installs with a default password. For some jailbreakers, their "research" ends before they learn that the interface is there and that it exposes them until they change the password. If they fail to choose a secure password, they will fall to brute force attacks when all of the default passwords have been exploited.
Apple makes a security choice every time it adds functionality to the interfaces. The jailbreakers may also make a choice but we know that they are including a great deal of legacy code and historically broken interfaces in their suites, code and interfaces too extensive for them to even know about the vulnerabilities that they may include.
I am content to use the product that Apple intended and that I bought. I appreciate the security model that Apple built, one where the complexity, generality, and flexibility is hidden from most users under one hundred thousand purpose-built applications.
I admit that I resent the fact that Apple uses this model to engage in restraint of trade with AT&T. However, in the interest of security, I am willing to wait for competitive pressure to force both Apple and AT&T to liberalize the restrictions within the Apple security model. Most of the restrictions that applied when I bought my first iPhone have disappeared. While I would love to have PDANet on my iPhone, as I had on my Treo, I can wait.
Fortunately for both me and thee, there are more of me than of thee. I wish you luck in your "research." At least for the time being, we do not have to do "research" or protect ourselves from the rogue hackers; you are the target. We do not have to outrun the bear, we only have to outrun you.