Apple sues high-profile leaker over ‘coordinated scheme’ to steal iOS secrets
In a drastic legal stage which will have settled alarm ringtards throughout the technical techniques, Apple continued the Youtuber Jon Prosser for having disclosed information on iOS 26 before its launch. Or, more specifically, for the methods he would have used to obtain this information.
As Macrumors reported, the company put a legal action (Scribd Link) on Thursday against Prosser and its partner Michael Ramacciotti, alleging a hijacking of trade secrets. The costume accuses both of a “coordinated diet” to enter an “development” iPhone, steal from Apple secrets and take advantage of it, thus harming the company and its employees.
“The unconducting of the defendants was cheeky and obvious,” said the trial. “After Mr. Prosser learned that Mr. Ramacciotti needed money and his friend Ethan Lipnik worked at Apple on unprecedented software conceptions, the defendants joined jointly to access the confidential and secret information of Apple by the development of Mr. Lipnik, belonging to the Apple.
“By staying with Mr. Lipnik, Mr. Ramacciotti used the location to determine when Mr. Lipnik would have left for an extended period, acquired his password and burst into his development iPhone, that Mr. Lipnik had failed to secure properly according to Apple policies. Disclosure the details of the iOS 19 unpublished [later announced as iOS 26] operating system.”
Apple is famous for the zealous with which the company keeps its secrets, but it is perhaps the most aggressive measure that it has taken against a leak since the house of Gizmodo, editor-in-chief Jason Chen, was attacked in 2010.
IOS 26, the new update of Apple’s iPhone software, was unveiled in WWDC in June, but as is often the case with unpublished Apple products, it was the subject of intense and argumentative speculation long before. In March, Prosser published a pretending video to offer “your very first IOS 19” overview “and then showed a screenshot of the new messages application in a podcast. (It is possible that these videos may be deleted as the trial progresses, so if you read this in the future, you may have to speak to us.) Fellow Leaker Mark Gurman then claimed that the iOS 19 screenshots going around – probably including the prosser to prosser, but did not name it with the “largest iOS”.
It now appears that if we want to believe the version of Apple’s events, that Prosser was so optimistic about its information, because it had been acquired from one of the own Apple devices performing a pre-liberation version of the software.
But Prosser claims the opposite. In a pair of answers to Macrumors’ tweet on this story, the Youtuber says “This is not how things went” and “I certainly did not” plot “to access the phone of anyone and not being aware of the situation.” This would seem to imply that, although Ramacciotti may have raised information from the iPhone of Lipnik, Prosser did not ask that this happens or knows when he did.
(It is also striking that the first word of his answer is simply “interesting”. It is a surprisingly Quiet response to the pursuit of one of the largest and most disputed companies in the world. He is an unusual character, as we found when we interviewed him in 2020.)
It will be interesting to see how this movement affects the flow of information through technological rumors: if the leaks will be intimidated in silence, even if it is only temporarily, and if their sources dry. This raises the question, of course, how leaks acquire their information on unpublished iOS builds, if not by methods similar to that described in this trial. How did Gurman know about iOS 19/26? Will he be prosecuted? Is there a legitimate way to flee?
All these questions and more will receive an answer in the coming months. We will follow the case as it progresses and will report the great developments here on Macworld.
