If familiarity breeds contempt, market domination breeds hackers

Apple Computer may soon be singing a new iTune on the subject of security. Last month, the maker of Mac computers and the wildly popular iPod personal entertainment device issued a statement chastising Microsoft for not being “hardy” in it efforts at combating viruses after a batch of iPods was found to have left an Apple manufacturing facility carrying a virus that would attack any Windows operating systems they were connected to. The iPods—which only carried the virus and were not affected by it—were said to have been infected by a Windows-based computer running at the Apple plant. A week later, though, Apple was contemplating what to do about a 22-year-old Norwegian hacker known as DVD Jon who apparently has figured out how to break the code preventing songs not downloaded from Apple's iTunes online music store from being played on iPods. The code also makes songs downloaded from iTunes unplayable on other manufacturers' devices.

Jon Lech Johansen earned the moniker DVD Jon when, at age 15, he unscrambled the program that movie companies used to stop DVDs from being copied. He posted his work-around to that problem on the Internet for anyone with the time and inclination to use it. This time, a seemingly more mature (if that's the right word) DVD Jon, wants to get paid for his work. He now has a company, Double Twist Ventures of Redwood Shores, Calif., which claims to already have a client signed up to use his technology to make its content available to iPod users.

As I was writing this, Apple had not commented on the situation. But this highlights something I have said many times in this space: the rap Microsoft has taken for Windows supposedly being inferior to Apple's Mac OS and the open-source Linux operating system from a security standpoint has as much to do with Windows' position atop the operating system market as anything else. The fact is hackers—whether they are 15 years old, seeking notoriety, or 22 years old, with financial ambitions—go after targets that promise the biggest impact. When it comes to computer operating systems, that means Windows. In the land of personal entertainment devices, the iPod gets the bull's eye. And the iPod's susceptibility to hacking may increase now that companies are issuing them to employees.

According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), National Semiconductor recently spent $2.5 million on iPods that serve as training tools for its 8,500 employees; and Siemens Medical Solutions distributed iPods to 100 people in its molecular-imaging group as both training and sales-support tools. One Siemens sales executive told WSJ the iPod was handy for listening to product information before meeting with customers. On a scary note, however, this executive also said he sometimes gets up extra early to listen to work-related material.

I'm in favor of using technology to make us more productive, but I'm starting to wonder if devices like cell phones, PDAs—and now the iPod—are slowly moving us toward the 24-hour workday.

What do you think? Send me an email and we can start a dialogue on the subject. But we can't start it today. ... This is supposed to be my day off.