Italian Piergiorgio Systems Engineer Zambrini won fame and money last year than it "bricked", the first widespread use, the unlocked iPhones running created for the mobile networks other than AT&T. Now he has another bid for the spotlight by unveiling a bug that the iPhone is able to crash and, he says, other devices such as iPods and Apple computers.
Zambrini planned to publish news about the bug Monday - even though he saves the technical details for Apple, he says - at least for the moment.
The 38-year-old security expert praised Apple's marketing skills and calls Steve Jobs a genius. But there are chinks in Apple's software - and Zambrini is determined to discover them.
The error Zambrini found in the audio portion of Apple's video format. Knowledge of the bug exists, could someone write a program that includes the bug in a video file and resolve a crash if an iPhone tries to execute the file. The error, which is located in a common code library that is used in most Apple operating systems and some Linux ones used and seems to cause no lasting damage, but the unit immediately sends in a panic, leading to a lengthy reboot.
Forbes.com has confirmed that it crashes the next generation of iPhones. Zambrini it claims can be any Apple iPod or iPhone, too.
Zambrini told Forbes.com that he discovered the mistake in July and sent an e-mail to explain to Job what he found. He also applied for a position Apple was advertising at the time: iPhone Security Engineer. "I usually have the ability to perceive things, where people do not find," says Zambrini. So far Apple has not responded to his resume.
The engineer drew large audiences last year, when his code unlocks the iPhone, making it possible to use the phone on other networks. Zambrini, who now maintains an independent security consultant, that his only reason for prying open Apple's proprietary equipment, primarily to help people abroad, was to use the phone with their home service.
His work was a lot: Zambrini iPhone unlocking software on site, Ziphone.org, had 15 million unique visitors worldwide in this year. Donations and advertising have made Zambrini with a healthy source of revenue available. Although he coy about revealing how much he's made of, says Zambrini that has at the height of the popularity of ZiPhone, the website is a new donation every minute. On his best day, he received more than $ 10,000 in donations, he says. These days, he displayed the charges advertisers $ 4,000 per month for a banner ad.
Apple iPhone has widened as sales to around 72 countries, Zambrini concedes that there is less "need" for the sort of "jailbreak" software that he wrote. Apple is "doing all the right things," by expanding its services internationally and lets consumers download applications from the App Store, he adds. And actually started the website traffic Zambrini to tail after this summer release of the iPhone 3G from Apple.
Is that the reason he applied for a job at Apple? "My goal is not to work for Apple, but who knows?" Zambrini said. "Just maybe a conversation with someone there - with Steve Jobs, if possible - could lead to nothing," he says. Zambrini acknowledges that the donation model that has allowed him, as an independent security consultant work, but says that his discovery of the beetle is not worth much to anyone outside of Apple. "People will never donate anything, just to see a phone to crash," he says.
Then again, someone might be willing to pay for this kind of information.
According to TippingPoint, a computer security company, which pays for such vulnerabilities can not be called an error like the one Zambrini price found on the open market to pick from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars. "If he wanted money to them, he could always try that our or any of the other exploit buying companies," says Cameron Hotchkies, reverse engineering and Apple expert at TippingPoint.
"The fact that it is in a video file is not really surprising to me," Hotchkies notes. "I'm actually surprised that it crashes the machine rather then crashes the web browser, because that means he has a kernel vulnerability in the iPhone."
Large software companies like Apple and Microsoft have typically Security Response Team with errors that were out of community programmers and independent security researchers to consider. TippingPoint says Zambrini could probably sell the mistakes of the government or private auction, but the software company also usually set up to promote security response teams to direct disclosure.
Hotchkies says that Microsoft is currently the market leader in the security response, but Apple can catch up quickly. "In recent years they have kind, have their security response and enhances its security team," he says. "Usually within a day I get a handwritten follow-up e-mail from someone on their security team told me who worked on it, so that, as I know there is someone look at it."
Zambrini said he had not yet contacted Apple's Security Response team. Forbes.com, an Apple spokesman informed about the error and is still awaiting an official response.
Together with other security experts, he says Zambrini is still exploring the bug's potential for harmful applications such as arbitrary code injection, which allow hackers to compromise a device would. So far, he says, he has not found that level of a vulnerability, but does not rule it out: "We can not say it is not possible," says Zambrini. "This matter must be investigated more deeply."
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