Savvy Developer Hacks Siri To Support Custom Commands
November 2, 2011
If you've ever dreamt about having Siri do things to for you that it wasn't programmed to, you're in luck. One savvy GitHub developer has reportedly managed to hijack the network connection Siri uses to return his own custom responses. This is potentially opening doors for some incredible applications.
That's right, by placing himself between Siri, and Apple's servers, Github employee Aman Gupta, aka @tmm1 on Twitter was able to dupe Siri into accepting commands of his own, and return whatever he wants her to. The trick, we assume, consists in him filtering the commands Siri is sending back to Apple using his computer, and replying with his own packets. From what he revealed, he's currently working on making Siri work with Hubot, a campfire bot add-on that GitHub (his employer) is using to unlock doors and say arbitrary things through their office speakers.
This is an incredible feat. Once the iPhone 4S gets jailbroken, this could be built in the phone itself, and potentially be enhanced by the jailbreak community to do anything you want. In a word, it's like an unofficial Siri API.
It's not clear what this really takes to function, beside being on the same WiFi network as your iPhone 4S and a having some mad network hacking skills. Yet, Gupta claims he got some help from @chpwn, the jailbreak extraordinaire who managed to port Siri to the iphone 4 last month.Therefore, it's unknown as of now if his system will ever be released to the public. We certainly hope so.
We can't wait to see where this is going. We'd love to have Siri be able to go on AIM, order food for us and who knows what else. This, is fortunately the first step towards that as we have a feeling Apple won't be letting third-party developers plug into Siri anytime soon. Yet who knows, if this gets anywhere, it might change their mind.
