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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Cracking the Apple DRM


With 10 million downloads in just 2 days of release, the iPhone AppStore is on its way to become a 'star' product (wiki Boston Matrix) of Apple. However, the huge demand and popularity means enthusiastic attention from hackers.

Apple has been known for its DRM (Digital Rights Management) policies or more popularly known as Fairplay which prevents the use of music or videos and now applications in unauthorized devices hence reducing piracy. However, hackers have been cracking the iTunes DRM for years now and hence making, especially songs, usable in any devices aiding piracy.

Now, amid the failures in Mobile Me, 3G iPhone shortages and slowing US economy, apple has been put forward a new challenge; protecting the applications in the iPhone AppStore.

Just recently, folks over at haklabs.com have successfully cracked the Super Monkey Ball game from Sega, thus, creating history. However, the cracking didn't stop then, its was so, that the crack worked for all the applications in the AppStore. Now, more than 50 applications have been cracked and available for download.

A sharp blow to Apple and the third party developers. They knew this was coming.

So, what does this mean to all the stakeholders? Well, apple will see a smaller growth in the store than previously expected, people who can't afford the apps can benefit from pirated content, however the most affected will be the application developers. All the hard work and time spend on developing those applications will go to waste and since these developers aren't just big co-operations but any Joe Blow, the Joes will starve to death.

While the hack is still in early phases and its not at all like buying pirated DVDs from Khasa (China Town or Thief Market of Kathmandu) and its still requires a hack and skills to make the cracked Apps work, folks at haklabs.com are working on making a AppStore like portal for the cracked apps!

I don't condone or support privacy. I think that things are too pricey, and since I'm currently unemployed, I should be getting benefits, shouldn't I?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I hate the DRM ,it puts restrictions on the music that you bought from the internet. Especially with the iTunes and Zune market songs that annoys me the most.
After searching on google and other tech sites, I found this to help me remove the DRM..
http://www.wmatomp3-converter.com/digital-music-converter.html