Today Apple CEO
Steve Jobs posted an
open letter on the Apple Web site explaining that Apple will make a software
developer kit available for the iPhone in February 2008. The kit will allow
third-party developers to create native applications that will run on the iPhone
and iPod Touch. The reason the kit won't be available until February is because
Apple wants to be sure that the iPhone is protected from malicious attacks while
still being open to third-party development. Jobs claims that creating an SDK
that does both will take time.
In other news,
HD Moore has publicly posted exploits that take advantage of a vulnerability
in Apple's iPhone, the same flaw that's been used by others to unlock the smart
phone so it will work on non-AT&T networks. The vulnerability, which is in the
TIFF image-rendering library shared by the iPhone's Safari browser and its
e-mail program, as well as by the iTunes software, leaves the iPhone wide open
to attack, said Moore, who posted a second, and more robust, exploit Tuesday
after debuting attack code Monday.