When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Jailbreak Siri port compromises personal data, breaks some iPhones

iDownloadBlog noticed that a jailbreak utility claiming full Siri functionality appeared in Cydia recently, supposedly compatible with any GSM or CDMA iPhone 4 running iOS 5 or 5.0.1. However, the unofficial app, called H1Siri, has been found to break some users' iPhones, and potentially worse, compromises the personal data of anyone who chooses to use it.

While there have been a couple other unofficial Siri ports before, this latest one is notable for not only allegedly offering the entire Siri experience, but also being readily available and installable to most jailbroken devices. Instructions on how to add the proper repo and install H1Siri can be found at iDownloadBlog, but it is unadvised for a few very big reasons that were uncovered in the aftermath of H1Siri's discovery.

For one, many zealous users claim that H1Siri is causing a bevy of undesirable behavior including random reboots, an unusable Camera app, and even bricking the iPhone. As if the chance of breaking your device wasn't enough of a red flag, iPhone hacker chpwn (Grant Paul) took to Twitter to warn users of an even greater risk of using H1Siri: compromised personal data, including emails, texts and contacts.

Paul tweeted: "Please note: if you use a proxy to access Siri, you may be sending your Email, SMS, Calendar, Contacts, Location, etc though that server." He then followed that up with another tweet: "(It's up to you if you want to accept that risk. It's also your choice if you want to violate copyright law to obtain the needed files.)"

Though Siri does seem to be a cool feature (one I have admittedly not had much firsthand experience with), the risks involved with these unofficial ports definitely outweigh the potential benefits. If you still decide to play around with H1Siri, consider yourself warned.

Report a problem with article
Next Article

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP2 released

Previous Article

Xbox Dashboard Update to go live by 10 am ET Tuesday

Join the conversation!

Login or Sign Up to read and post a comment.

21 Comments - Add comment