Apple Made A Top-Secret iPod For the United States Government
The smartphone giant produced a top-secret music player for the US government, alleges a former Apple software engineer who labored on the iPod.
The Objective Was to Make An iPod That Could Run Custom Software
David Shayer, who operated for the corporation for 18 years, wrote that in 2005 the director of iPod Software asked him of a special task with two engineers from the US Department of Energy to develop a unique iPod.
Their objective was to construct an iPod that would be capable to run custom hardware in a way that could not be exposed. The two engineers were from Bechtel, a US defense service provider that operated with the Department of Energy.
Shayer himself, the manager of iPod Software, the vice head of the iPod Division, and the senior vice president of Hardware. These were the only four people in Apple who knew of this projects’ presence, corresponding to Shayer.
To prevent a documented track, all interaction was evidently done in person. Whilst Shayer asserts he does not see what the engineers were constructing, he assumes that it was something like a secrecy Geiger counter.
Shayer wrote, ‘You may well walk around a city, calmly listening to your songs, while taping indication of particle emission, skimming for trafficked or filched uranium, for example, or indication of a dirty bomb progress package, with no chance that the press or public would get a breeze of what was happening’.
He also evokes, ‘This wasn’t a partnership with Bechtel with a deal and compensation, it was Apple doing a preference under the table for the Department of Energy’.
They allegedly constructed a copy of the iPod operational structure from that code and stacked it onto a music player, while Bechtel was not given Apple’s source secret code for the iPod.
Apple Installed Its Secret Code into iPods’ Storage Region
A secret compartment on the disk was developed by the engineers, an area of iPod storage space that could be operated individually from its main use.
An unwary individual could plug the iPod into a computer, using this trick, and it would not be identified as a customized tool.
Adding the task covertly in a menu screen in the iPod’s inclinations, they also built a way to start and stop filming. The iPod in question was a fifth-generation iPod, which included video functions to Apple’s music player.
It was the last iPod where Apple did not numerically sign the operational system, which made the gadget hackable, says Shayer. From the first iPod Nano, Apple altered its procedures, preventing the iPod from being slashed by fanatics.
Shayer considers that the company would have declined if Apple had been asked to run similar software on the Nano, more readily than the fifth-generation iPod.
Shayer reckons, ‘If you questioned Apple about the ritual iPod project, the PR people would tell you frankly that Apple has no history of any such project’.
The Independent has stretched out to Apple and Bechtel for clarification.
