iPhone push on unlocked phones sends AIM message to unintended recipients

Pretty lame post - if the issue is limited to Jailbroken phones - it's not a bug or exploit with iPhone OS 3.0. It's a side effect of running a Jailbroken / hacked version of the OS. No doubt Jailbroken users appreciate knowing about the issue, but ease up on the sensationalistic titles.

What. The. Hell.

I've never read a more poorly researched or understood article in I don't know when. Not only does the author NOT understand the actual subject, but he got it wrong "akschully" pretty good. I'm dropping TUAW for this. I want crap reporting like this, I'll go read Microsoft press releases.

And I had considered TUAW to be one of the last legit Mac news sources out there. Sucks to be wrong.

Solution? Don't hacktivate your iPhone.

No: The issue is that it seems as though even messages sent from any AIM client are showing up on 3rd party devices with the hack.

So if you have a legitimate iPhone with push enabled and you send a message to your mom, that might show up on somebody random person's phone if they use the push hack.

Am I missing something? Isn't this a problem for legitimate users too? Isn't the problem that the notification and message is sent to a hacktivated phone with duplicated keys, potentially from a legit phone?

Bob is completely correct.

This post should not include any form of the word "Jailbreak" anywhere in it. This problem is strictly contained to those who have unlocked their phone.

Hey, TUAW: If some guy modifies their iPhone so that it’s possible to exploit it, you don’t get to call the problems an “iPhone push exploit,” nor do you get to blame it “on iPhone 3.0's push notification.”

What a useless piece of journalism.

This problem isn't one for jailbreakers. It is one for unlockers. Some people seem to use the terms interchangeably. The Push notification problem was/is only a problem to unlockers. Folks who jailbreak are simply allowing themselves access to unathorized applications. They are still on the AT&T network, unless they do the unlock.

The way push notification works is that the application registers with Apple's servers when it starts up. Apple returns a supposedly unique identifier from their servers and this is what the application uses to send messages. The application says, send this JSON string to this UID, that is all. If some hacked phones are using the exact same activation keys then it's no wonder that the UID is the same for all the phones.

honestly this really isnt apple's problem... (or at least I could see them saying this...) however, its not going to really inspire people to want to use push notifications if stuff that could be considered confidential, is being broadcast to a lot of people it wasnt destined for.