Apple's Siri 'hacked'

In The Telegraph

Apple's new voice-controlled personal assistant software, Siri, could be adapted to run on Android handsets after developers discovered a way around restrictions designed to limit it to iPhone 4S users.

The hack means that the servers that process the questions users ask Siri could be accessed by devices other than the iPhone 4S.

It was discovered by Applidium, a French mobile software company that reverse-engineered the protocol Siri uses to communicate with its servers. The firm found a way to intercept and decrypt the data by forging security certificates, allowing a detailed examination of the data format.

However, the requests include a unique "key" for each iPhone 4S. To exploit the flaw, each Android device would have to find a way to to impersonate Apple's new smartphone, Applidium said.

So any third party app offering unauthorised access to the Siri server could be quite easily blocked by Apple because all its users would probably have to use the same key.

Apple has restricted Siri to the iPhone 4S. Technical analysis has indicated that older versions are equally capable of running the service, since the hardest computing is carried out by the servers, but it seems Siri is being used to differentiate the latest iPhone.