thomas fitzgerald.net

If you ever wanted proof that modern society is a little paranoid, then look no further than the mass hysteria created by the folks over at Tutorial Ninjas when they reported that their SSH fiddling on their Apple TV had been mysteriously reset over night.

“Several of us over in the Awkward TV IRC(l0rdr0ck, myself, and others) have had our Mod’d Apple TV’s played with over night(SSH/VNC disabled), our guess is apple has started to fight back the mod’d Apple TV’s. This is a warning to all of you to block your Apple TV from the internet by going into your routers settings and denying it internet access!
This does mean Apple may have the power to update your Apple TV, without you knowing it!”

Rather than the obvious thought that there are simple automatic repair scripts running on the device, they made the giant leap to come to the conclusion that Apple are mysteriously and secretively hacking into your Apple TV at night to reset your system to its default settings.

Can anyone really picture an army of Apple employees sitting in a darkened building hidden within the bowels of Cupertino, hooked up to caffeine drips, staring at their 30 inch cinema displays, waiting for a signal from a lone distant Apple TV that it has been hacked, so they can spring to life, stealthily hack back into your AppleTV and reset the system, disappearing into the night, leaving no trace of their secret mission? No, I didn’t think so. Im guessing Apple really don’t care that much.

But the worst thing about this story, is not the initial conclusion jumping exercise by the people who discovered that their devices had reset themselves, it is the fact that a whole bunch of news sites picked up on it as evidence of a dark cruel big brother side to Apple. No one seemed content with the far more likely scenario. So, based on the supposition of one hacker, with no back up evidence what so ever, you are seeing headlines like: “Apple Hacks the Hackers” , “Apple locking out modded Apple TVs?” and my personal favourite “Did Apple install a rootkit in Apple TV?”. The consensus amongst almost every sane person is that this is just a automated repair script running on the device, which will undoubtedly be overcome in a day or so. The hysterical reporters and bloggers out there need to chill a bit. Remember the device has only been available to the public for a little over a week now.

UPDATE:
Freaky Coincidence: Dan Moren over at Mac User posted similar thoughts. This whole story does invoke images of 1960’s James Bond or The Incredibles every time you read it. Seriously, it really is ridiculous to think Apple are hacking into Apple TVs to hack them back.