According to Apple, the same tactics used to multitask on the iPhone or change the appearance of its interface could render cell phone towers inoperable.
The company says a jailbroken phone leaves cell phone networks open to "potentially catastrophic" cyber-attacks from hackers, Wired reports. These malicious individuals could alter the iPhone's baseband processor software that connects to cell phone towers, allowing them to send out denial of service attacks or other commands.
"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," Apple claims.
Apple's complaints were made to the U.S. Copyright Office, in response to a push from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to legalize jailbreaking. It's argued by Apple that jailbreaking is a violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act because it circumvents the controls to the protected work of the iPhone. The EFF is seeking an exemption.
Lost on Apple is the idea that anyone who hacks into a phone's software for the purpose of crashing a cell phone tower probably has a general disregard for the law anyway. And it's not like jailbreaking isn't already possible. For all Apple's talk about security, this looks like an obvious attempt by the company to keep control on its closed system.
