pose a serious threat to the enterprise. Even if the end user doesn't intend to load malware, he will be completely unaware of malware present in unauthorized apps.

Apple declined to comment.

The new API was part of a bundle of mobile device management (MDM) APIs released in June with iOS 4.0. These APIs were available to third-party MDM applications, such as or Sybase's . With the new APIs, these servers could access directly a range of features and information in iOS or on the device. But in the recently-released 4.2 version, the API intended for detecting jailbreaks has been either removed or disabled.

This detection API let the MDM applications in effect ask the operating system if it had been compromised. Jailbreak exploits typically change a number of operating system files, and exploit one or another low-level OS features to let users directly load their own or third-party applications. In October 2010, two separate jailbreaks made use of different , for example. warns that jailbreaking voids the and could damage the phone.