iPod Touch Falls Prey to 13-Year-Old Hacker

Like the iPhone before it, the iPod touch has been compromised by a young computer maestro, allowing it to run third-party applications.

You don’t need to have a high school diploma, driver’s license or even legal independence to successfully subvert the best efforts of a major corporation from your home computer. That’s what one 13-year-old who goes by the handle AriX proved with iJailbreak, a program to easily crack the iPod Touch’s restrictions on third-party applications.

Promoted on iJailbreak.com, the application uses AppleScript to smooth over the process of hacking the iPod Touch, which had been accomplished before in the hacking community but required a lengthy process that was unsuitable for most novices. The new hack merely requires users to run the program and restart the device, leaving an icon when it has completed. Afterwards, users can do as they please with the Touch’s applications.

Currently, the application has only been tested on Apple computers running OS X Tiger on Intel chips, with support for Power-PC-based Macs in the works.