According to a group of hackers in India, Apple, RIM and Nokia could be providing backdoor access to the Indian government, allowing them to monitor user data. The Indian government might be insisting on this access in exchange for allowing Apple and other smartphone vendors to offer their products and services in India, they have allegedly given them access to cellular communications. The agreement appears to be called RINOA (Rim, Nokia, Apple).

Several documents have been found referring to RINOA and how information was gathered from some of these government bodies. I know India is a large country but I'm not quite sure what is more damaging -- not having a presence there at all or betraying your customers' trust by allowing the local government to access data without their knowledge.

Source: ZDNet

The Gold Master of iOS 4 that was just released yesterday after Steve Jobs WWDC keynote has already been jailbroken by msft.guy. This was accomplished by using some hackery along with the Dev Teams's existing Pwnagetool.

The Dev Team has stated that they do have a working jailbreak for the final iOS 4 but we will not see that until June 21st or shortly there after so it may be wise to hold off on this particular hack. But if you are feeling brave and just have to jailbreak your iPhone 3GS running the iOS 4 GM then feel free to give it a try using these directions here.

Video after the break!

[Redmond Pie]

It would appear that Apple has taken a more agressive approach to certain iPhone hackers by banning their Apple IDs from the iTunes App Store.

iPhone developer/hacker, Sherif Hashim, first received a message on his iPhone after attempting to log into iTunes saying:

“This Apple ID has been disabled for security reasons.”

Now one would think this may be just a single incident but no, fellow hacker iH8sn0w responded saying he too was hit with the Apple ban hammer. This is turning out to be very Microsoft with their Xbox Live bannings to stop hacked consoles from playing on their online service and it's exactly what we predicted could very well happen.

Now, to be clear, Apple isn't banning Jailbreakers -- they're banning people who actively work to find exploits in the iPhone software to create Jailbreaks for the rest of us.

This may be a sign of things to come, however. Will Apple open the gates to unleash hell onto hackers, or is this simply a case of a few isolated instances? You be the judge, lets hear your thoughts in the comments below!

[Thanks for the tip Taimur! Via Redmond Pie]

Ok, well Apple is really not selling $200 iTunes gift cards for only $2.60 so keep dreaming. But according to Music Ally Chinese "pirates" have hacked the algorithm that generates the iTunes gift cards and so now fake cards are flooding the market for as low as $2.60 in China. When we say flooding we literally mean flooding the Chinese market:

Apparently six months ago, a $200 card went for around 320 RMB (roughly $47), but the price has since plummeted to around 18 RMB ($2.60) as more sellers pile in.

With the iPhone 3G getting ready to make an appearance in China it should be interesting to see just how Apple responds to this. Apple will more than likely make a quick change to nullify the pirates ability to create these cards but it's not like you can do away with the ones already in circulation as there is no easy way to decipher a bogus card from one that is legit (unless they have some super secret Apple wonder-ETL and ad-hoc query/number-crunching monster we don't know about).

[Via Music Ally]

It's not very often that you get to see Steve Wozniak in a interview. Well the iPhone Dev Team found this gem of an interview and posted it for all to see. Woz speaks up on Steve Jobs, Apple, hackers, and most importantly the iPhone! I'll stop talking... watch the video if you have not done so already!

[Via blog.iphone-dev.org]

Okay, so their names weren't really Harold & Kumar (Fukaba and Vincenti, for the record), but then again it doesn't really sound like they were banned for life from the Apple Store as initial Interwebs rumor mongering suggested, b'okay?

Seems some Palo Alta teens were waiting for a classmate, ducked into the Apple Store to burn some time, and ended up getting burned instead. You know the story, boy finds iPhone, boy Jailbreaks iPhone, boy downloads Raging Thunder, to show another boy, Apple Store management, security, police, and parents become involved and hilarity ensues. (Though perhaps not for our hapless hax0rs and their two friends).

Fake Steve has the full fake details on what sounds to me like a bit of a fake -- or more accurately overblown -- story.

Hopefully no iPhones were bricked in the course of these shenanigans and the boys will be back to giving all their money to Apple again in the near future.