ZiPhone Developer Reveals Bug that can Crash the iPhone

November 2009

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iPhone Hacker, Piergiorgio Zambrini (aka Zibri) who had developed ZiPhone, the extremely popular software method to jailbreak and unlock iPhone running firmware 1.x is making headlines again.

He has revealed a bug that can crash the iPhone when it plays a specially created video. He claims that the bug could crash other Apple devices such as iPod and Macs as well.

Zibri who demoed the bug to Forbes has not yet revealed the technical details of the bug which can crash the iPhone when it plays a specially created video. He plans to save the technical details for Apple for the time being.

Zibri has found the bug in the audio portion of Apple's video format. He believes that someone with malicious intent could write a program that incorporates the bug into a video file and trigger a crash whenever an iPhone attempts to run that file.

The bug does not cause permanent damage to the device however the bug which is located in the shared code library immediately sends the iPhone into panic that leads to a reboot.

A reverse engineer and Apple expert at TippingPoint notes:

"I'm actually surprised that it's crashing the device rather then crashing the Web browser because that means he's got a kernel vulnerability in the iPhone."

Zibri also claims that he had spotted the bug back in July and reported it to Steve Jobs himself. He had also applied for a job as iPhone Security Engineer but neither Steve Jobs or anyone from Apple has responded so far.

There is no way to verify the bug, as Zibri has not yet published the link to the video file on his blog which can crash your iPhone as demoed in the video below.