Lab Notes

iPhone Apps Run as Root

Ars Technica notes that applications on the iPhone run as the root user. That provides a good explanation for the lack of an SDK for third party developers: every application would have access to every function on the phone ("What? I didn't make a ten hour call to Albania!"). I'm not sure that running applications as root is huge news though, given that the root account password has already been cracked (it's 'dottie', by the way). Plus, it's hard for me to complain given that we sell an application that starts up as root (or LocalSystem on Windows), even if it does drop that privilege later on.