Apple Seeks New Security Head As Exploits Increase

Ed Sutherland ()

Credit: William Hook/Flickr

Credit: William Hook/Flickr

With hackers feasting on the iPhone, Apple appears to be looking for a new sheriff. The Cupertino, Calif. company is advertising for an “iPhone Security Manager” passionate about understanding security exploits. The move may be aimed at the latest round of jailbreak software released on the Internet.

Appearing Oct. 16 on Apple’s Web site, the ad seeks “a very technical and hands-on leader, someone with a passion for understanding security exploits and coming up with innovative methods to create secure platforms.” The chief goal for the new security chief: to “set the roadmap for the iPhone OS platform security.”

Since it’s introduction in 2007, the iPhone has been a target of hackers seeking to allow handset owners to “jailbreak” the phone, permitting non-Apple approved applications. Recently, a young hacker released a new jailbreak for iPhone OS 3.12. George Holtz created blackra1n, a one-click jailbreak. Holtz earlier released the first jailbreak for the iPhone 3GS and two years ago offered the jailbreak for the original iPhone.

Earlier this week a hacker from Netherlands asked for $7 for each jailbroken iPhone he accessed due to weak security. Before apologizing on his Web site, the hacker left the text message: “Your iPhone’s been hacked because it’s really insecure!” and asked victims to send $7 to a PayPal account.

In another iPhone security concern, a California man was charged with spying on iPhone users after the state alleged his iPhone applications secretly collected phone numbers.

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[Via AppleInsider, CNet and MacNN]

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About the author

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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  • iGenius

    “Hackers feasting on the iPhone…”?

    WTF kind of a premise is that?

    How about “With tech-minded users adding new, but non-profitable (for Apple) capabilities to their iPhones, Apple seeks to impose an even tighter clamp on customers’ ability to use their hardware to the fullest…”?

  • chaos_disorder

    iGenius nailed it. While the stock configuration of the iPhone and iPod Touch may be great for the majority of people, for those of us who know what we’re doing and don’t want Apple dictating to us what our user experience should be, the jailbreaking community has been a blessing. We paid for these devices, yet Apple still wants to tell people what their purchases should look like and how they should behave. Ridiculous.

  • Terry

    Anyone know what theme is being used on that phone ?

  • Terry

    To answer my own question . . . it’s a mix of Deep 2.1 and Smoog