Apple ‘malicious app’ blacklist
p2pnet news view | Products:- { “Date Generated” = “2008-08-07 12:23:57 Etc/GMT”; “BlackListedApps” = { “com.mal.icious” = { “Description” = “Being really bad!”; “App Name” = “Malicious”; “Date Revoked” = “2004-02-01 08:00:00 Etc/GMT”; }; }; }
That’s what we saw when we entered https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps which, according to MacRumors, is a “remote url that Apple is using to keep a list of the offending applications”.
Earlier, “When Apple launched the App Store, they suggested that the use of DRM’d and signed applications could allow them to protect the iPhone from malicious applications and suggested that they could deactivate such applications remotely,” the story goes on.
“Jonathan Zdziarski, author of iPhone Forensics, reveals (via iPhone Atlas) the remote url that Apple is using to keep a list of the offending applications,” says the story, going on the ‘unauthorizedApps’ url, “appears to keep a list of black listed apps which appears to contain a test application name”
MacRumors quotes Zdziarski as saying »»»
This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.I discovered this doing a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation.
Adds the story:”We suspect Apple will reserve the use of this black list remote-deactivation for truly malicious apps, but even the unilateral removal of seemingly innocuous apps from the App Store has raised some criticism of Apple’s editorial process.”
.
.Stumble It!
MacRumors -Apple’s Ability to Deactivate Malicious App Store Apps, August 6, 2008
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