When Apple first launched the App Store they brought with them an insurance policy; the ability to remotely deactivate or “blacklist” any iPhone/iTouch applications that they deemed to be malicious.
The folks over at iPhoneAtlas have uncovered what appears to be a remote URL intended to keep a list of banned App Store applications. While this list is currently empty, I’m sure we can expect to see a few applications making their way up there in the months to come.
This means that if Apple deems a certain application to be malicious and to have somehow gotten by their initial filters, they can not only remove it from the iTunes App Store, but they can also remove it from any iPhone currently using the 3G network or WiFi.
Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the book iPhone Open Application Development and an iPhone Forensics manual explains:
“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.”
Check out the currently empty list of Apple’s blacklisted iPhone/iTouch applications here
[iPhoneAtlas ]
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August 7th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Here’s hoping the pwnage crew find a way to get this turned off!
August 11th, 2008 at 9:54 am
looks like there is a banned app now.
{ “Date Generated” = “2008-08-11 14:52:48 Etc/GMT”; “BlackListedApps” = { “com.mal.icious” = { “Description” = “Being really bad!”; “App Name” = “Malicious”; “Date Revoked” = “2004-02-01 08:00:00 Etc/GMT”; }; }; }
September 24th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Just jailbreak the iPhone and install BossPrefs, it has an option to turn this off and there have already been a couple of apps that have been removed remotely (I forget their names at the moment, but it was at AT&T’s request that they be removed that they were, nope was an application that allowed teathering.)