Can Apple remotely disable iPhone apps?

If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll know that Apple has no compunction about removing programs from its App Store without warning or explanation. However, has Apple also engineered in an ability to make the iPhone in your pocket turn off any apps the company deems undesirable?

Jonathan Zdziarski thinks so. If you’ve not heard of Zdziarski then we’ll remind you that that he’s the clever chap who used his own ‘forensic toolkit’ to discover that Apple had been sending out refurbished iPhones that contained data from previous owners. Well, now he’s been picking apart latest (2.x) version of the iPhone OS – and his findings make for uncomfortable reading. More after the cut.

According to iPhone Atlas, Zdziarski has unearthed a blacklisting mechanism in iPhone 2.x that enables the device to call home in order to check for 'unauthorised' applications. The OS apparently includes a direction to a special web page that lists flagged applications. However, as yet, the URL – https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps – doesn’t contain anything of note.

iPhone Atlas quotes Zdziarski as follows:

This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.

I discovered this doing a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation.

[via iPhone Atlas and Zdziarski.com]