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First iOS, Now Mac OS X In-App Purchases Hacked
An anonymous reader writes "Last week Russian developer Alexey Borodin hacked Apple's In-App Purchase program for all devices running iOS 3.0 or later, allowing iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users to circumvent the payment process and essentially steal in-app content. Apple [Friday] announced a temporary fix and that it would patch the holes with the release of iOS 6. While Cupertino was distracted, Borodin came in and pulled off the same scheme on the Mac."
Amiright?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
allowing iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users to circumvent the payment process and essentially steal in-app content
You mean the users (well... only one user) can actually copy and delete it from the application vendors' hardware? Wow, that is bad!
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Ive read some comments on the pages in the links and they seem to say this is not Apples fault but the dev's fault for not using the "3 lines of code" to verify in app purchases. What I want to ask is why this is not the default behavior in iOS.
YA... U R
Yeah, they've been distracted...by the upcoming release of Mountain Lion in the next few weeks. Anyone willing to bet that this issue is fixed in Mountain Lion just as it's been promised to be fixed in iOS 6?
Users can delete the in-app content from the sever? If this is true, it is certainly a major fuck up by Apple.
Apple has recommended all along that you verify receipts to make sure they're not fake. Some apps don't, and can be hacked. How surprising.
It wants to be free, y'all.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Who pays for software anyway?
Apple already explained to developers how to close the hole, with in-App receipts. Also, it's closed in iOS 6
Yea let the misdirection begin. You know what I mean. People will not blame Apple they will blame the users for doing things that they shouldn't be doing. Or the developers for not doing things the way they should be doing things. It's a walled garden people. Remember the Microsoft hate for them letting things go when it is out of their hands? In this case it really is Apple's fault for letting this stuff thru. Apple is not really being a good gardner for the fruits and nuts that are growing, right? Yea go a head and mode me for telling it how it is and you have no recourse but to try to shift the blame. Remember you can't deniy the truth no matter how much it splatters you on the face!
With a few rare exceptions, most games with in-app purchases are designed so that your progress in the game is directly proportional to how much you're willing to spend. In several games, no amount of patience or skill will allow you to progress. And in some games, progress itself is an illusion, with no obvious indication that your "missions" are being randomly generated and there is no way to ever "beat" the game.
It's extremely shady on Apple's part to allow developers to label apps that require in-app purchases as "free". The way I see it, this is karma.
I'm all for developers getting paid for their work. If they really want to nickel and dime you for every bell and whistle in the app or make you insert a coin each time you lose a life, that's their prerogative - but Apple needs to make it a lot clearer what you're downloading, since in-app-purchases mean "free" no longer means what it used to.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
What 1 man builds another can destroy. Always.
The real news is of course it took him so long to defeat the exact same system in a more open OS.
A lot of these in-app purchases have an entirely client-side effect, such as changing how much in-game money you have. As usual, if you control the hardware, you can do whatever you want.
If you have a jailbroken iDevice, you can make a program to change any client-side variable of a game by just calling task_for_pid and vm_write. No need to mess with the purchase receipt system at all.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
i don't buy apps or download apps with those. i just don't. maybe it's irrational but i hate hidden costs.
If you're selling through the appstore you allow Apple in the medium term to take away the ability to publish and distribute your software yourself. When all you got is the appstore Apple can deny you on a whim, perhaps because Apple or one of its partners wants into whatever market you've got, maybe because they or some entity they're affiliated with just doesn't like what you're doing. Nobody needs the appstore except Apple and friends to control your access to market.
Quit your whining, kid! Back in my day we kept pumping more quarters into the machine no matter how many times the game cheated us and we liked it!
Copyright infringement is theft of permission. It takes away the copyright holder's ability to control any copying. So yes, it is stealing; not of the "product" per se, but of the holder's right of control. That cat doesn't go back in the bag.
With all the outspoken Apple fanboys touting how great IOS and OSX are, being Apple apologists for Apple's patent trolling, and mocking Android and linux, how should I react to this situation? How about this: HAHA IN YOUR FACE!
Hijacking, then?
The "World's most advanced mobile operating system"
The amazing banana of awesomeness And copyright protections
(An allegorical tale)
One day while shopping at the local grocery store I wondered over to the produce section to look for bananas. In the produce section, right next to the peaches; bananas were available for 49 cents a pound. As I got closer to the bananas I noticed that on the other side of the bananas was a locked display case. Inside the case was a different selection of bananas. The first banana was called an “amazing banana” and cost $10 a banana. The second was listed as the “awesome banana” and was priced at $100 a banana. The last was the “amazing banana of awesomeness” and it could be purchased for $500 a banana.
I grabbed a bunch of the regular bananas, and on a whim decided to gamble $10 and see how amazing one of the “amazing bananas” really was. After getting home I grabbed, peeled, and ate one of the regular bananas and got exactly what I expected; the regular banana experience. I then tried the “amazing banana” and when I peeled it, I noticed that it was less stringy and when I ate a piece the texture and flavor lived up to the name; the banana was in fact amazing.
I could never afford to replace all of my regular morning bananas with “amazing bananas”. I could probably justify the expense of an “amazing banana” on a few occasions. The cost of the “awesome banana” and the “amazing banana of awesomeness” on the other hand would never be justifiable on my current salary.
My curiosity was peaked though. Exactly how awesome is an “awesome banana” and what could possibly be so amazingly awesome about the “amazing banana of awesomeness” that it would cost $500? Curiosity alone was never going to provide me with the funds required to purchase either of the premium bananas, so I would have to take a different approach. One idea would be to find a better job with a salary that would allow me to afford such luxurious bananas, but the economy wasn’t that great and I was barely lucky enough to have found my current job. I could try to grow my own, but when I searched online I found out that there was not enough information. What I could find only talked about how they had to use expensive fertilizers and strictly regulate the climate and lighting to produce the bananas. Another (bad) idea was that I could also wait at the store until the display case was opened, grab some of the premium bananas and make a run for it; but the idea of stealing and possibly spending time in jail over a banana (which by its price alone might constitute a felony) pretty much killed that idea. Then I remembered something my uncle had told me
My uncle works for one of those high tech companies and had created a device that could scan something from a distance and give a full breakdown on its composition. Basically you point it at an item and click the scan button, a few seconds later it has all the information about the molecules, what elements are involved, how they are bonded to each other, and even down to the quantum states or spins or some other sciency stuff that I didn’t understand (which was probably why I was stuck in the job I had.) What I did know, was that with this information and enough raw materials I could go to the molecular compiler and create an exact duplicate of any banana that I had scanned.
With plan in place, I went to my uncle and asked to borrow his scanner. He didn’t lend me one but he had already created a scan of his own scanner, so he gave me the scan data to create my own scanner. So after a quick trip to the matter compiler I had my own scanner, I then proceeded to the store scanned their bananas and walked out. The scanner listed a bunch of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, potassium, and other trace minerals. Basically the premium bananas were made of pretty much the exact same types of matter as the regular ones. The only real di
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