More intriguingly, however, are the reports that Siri’s security code – which checks for the presence of several iPhone chipsets – has been cracked, meaning that – in theory at least – the software could run on an Android, BlackBerry or Windows smartphone/tablet.
Whilst there have been instances of crackers developing a ROM bootstrap routine to install Android on an iPhone – although the resultant speed is very poor, Infosecurity notes – the attraction of running a voice assistant on other portable platforms would be a major one.
The methodology behind the crack is seriously technical, however and requires users of third-party smartphones to have a segmented image of the iPhone 4/4S’ bios and a utility from Applidium, the Frencg iOS developer.
The technical problems involved are complex as, according to the Mygreatiphone newswire, the iPhone 4S has identifiers everywhere, meaning that, if want to use Siri on another device, you still need the unique identifier of at least one original iPhone 4S.
According to a Kaspersky Lab researcher, meanwhile, various demos and utilities have been posted on the web and, says Brian Donohue, the crackers have solved the problem of Siri sending its data to a remote server.
In his latest Threatpost note, Donohue says that this data feed centers on raw audio data using the Speex audio codec - which is specifically tailored for internet telephony.
The cracker, he asserts, discovered that the Speex protocol is verbose and generates a lot of information to Apple's servers – with Apple replying with a lot of data in return.
Applidium’s methodology to crack Siri is quite interesting, as whilst the Apple Siri data feed uses HTTPS, by faking an HTTPS server - using a fake DNS server – they were able to work out the format of the data involved.
Unfortunately, says Applidium’s posting, the people behind Siri did things right in checking that the iPhone’s profile certificate is correct, but this issue can be negated, they claim, by adding your root certificate, which allows users to mark any certificate they want as valid.
“So basically all we had to do was to set-up a custom SSL certification authority, add it to our iPhone 4S, and use it to sign our very own certificate for a fake guzzoni.apple.com. And it worked: Siri was sending commands to your own HTTPS server. Seems like someone at Apple missed something", says Applidium.