iOS Piracy Goes P2P & Mac App Store Gets Cracked
December 27, 2010
We're learning that iOS and app piracy is on the verge of taking on a whole new dimension due to some major developments made by the iOS app cracking community.
As announced on TorrentFreak (the people behind AppTrackr and Installous), the illegal cracked apps sharing networks, have put together a system that will allow turning every user of the illegal platform into a contributor. No longer will each person who wants to crack and share an app have to go through a complicated process and upload it to their site. The new software will automatically prompt users to crack the apps from their device, and share them online. All of this is powered by some very advanced cloud/P2P distributed sharing technology.
At the moment, there are very few contributors of cracked apps, so downloaders often have to wait some time before new apps are available to download. Also, since many apps are not available, it has dampened the popularity of such services.
However, from now on, the new system will be able to leverage the 10+ million users of the service, and have them each share every app they own illegally on the web with just one tap. This might make many more cracked apps available much faster.
Furthermore, TorrentFreak also announced the protection that will secure Mac App Store apps (starting next week) has also already been circumvented. Apparently, the cracking software will not be released right away, but it's very clear the same phenomenon that happened with iOS apps will also be present on the Mac App Store.
Obviously this is very wrong, and we can only condemn pirating software of any kind. Also, if you're using cracked apps networks, you can now get in very serious trouble as cracking and uploading apps is a much bigger offense than just downloading them. Please don't do it.
Nevertheless, the level of sophistication and the impressive tech behind the cracked apps movement is interesting. It makes us think that Apple, which has yet to do anything about iOS piracy, might have to seriously consider taking some action.
What do you think?
