Apple Begins Blocking Hackers from App Store

Apple appears to have begun actively blocking certain hackers from accessing the App Store with their iPhones over security-related reasons.

At least two popular hackers in the iPhone community have been blocked from accessing the App Store so far and are instead seeing a message that states "This Apple ID has been disabled for security reasons."

The two hackers that have been blocked so far are Sherif Hashim and iH8sn0w. Hashim discovered an exploit in iPhone OS 3.1.3 that could let users owners unlock the iPhone 3G and 3GS for use on any cell network, and iH8sn0w is behind the Sn0wbreeze project that lets Windows users jailbreak iPhones updated to OS 3.1.3.

Both hackers shared their banning experiences on Twitter with Hashim putting on his best hax0r face to say "and guess what my apple ID was, "[email protected]", what a fool was me not to notice :))), can't help laughing, they are babies :)))"

iH8sn0w replied with "@sherif_hashim lol, they did that to my ih8sn0wyday[@t]googmail.com too. (right after I posted XEMN)..."

So far it appears that banning mobile access to Apple's App Store is limited to only a couple people involved in developing iPhone hacks, and does not include users that jailbreak or unlock their iPhone or iPod touch.

[Thanks to Redmond Pie for the heads up.]