Chinese app store offers paid iOS apps

Chinese app store offers paid iOS apps for free without the need for jailbreak


Despite Apple's "walled garden" approach to its App Store, there have been many websites and apps over the years that allowed pirating iOS apps. According to VentureBeat, a new one has popped up. The website, 7659.com, is owned by Kuaiyong and supposedly uses Apple's bulk enterprising licensing technology to distribute pirated apps to iPhone and iPad users in China for free.

The website only opens if you're in China, though you can get there if you spoof your location by using a proxy. It offers a wide collection of apps for both the iPhone and the iPad. Because it uses the enterprising licensing technology, users don't have to jailbreak their iPhones or iPads to install the pirated apps.

Apple has undoubtedly built in failsafes for such situations so that it can verify apps itself. The website points out that if you are visiting it from outside China, you shouldn't use your Apple ID.

Pirating apps is getting way too easy

Another iOS piracy service, Zeusmos, had shed some light on its inner workings back in January. Developer Zuesmos had stated that his intent wasn't to encourage piracy. "The intent of Zeusmos will be to SOLELY code sign applications. We will not be supporting or encouraging any form of piracy through the link providers or even via search (although they were based off the iTunes API)," he said.

According to Zeusmos, the intent of his service was to allow developers to code-sign apps for distribution as betas, or to audiences outside the App Store. This could possibly be to fill in a niche that is currently using Cydia, but without the need to jailbreak their device. "I wanted this thing originally to be self-sustainable. Most of my applications are mostly free otherwise speaking, such as CarrierEditor…my latest release," says Zeusmos.

Before this, famous iOS hacking community Hackulous was shut down. Visiting the community's website threw up a message titled "Goodnight, sweet prince," which explained the reasons for the community's shutting down.

The main reason for the site shutting down is the lack of activity on the website. According to the message on the website, the community grew stagnant and there was very little activity on the forums. "After many years, our community has become stagnant and our forums are a bit of a ghost town," the message read. The Hackulous staff was finding it difficult to maintain the forums due to a dwindling population.

Hackulous was famous for many of its apps, including Crackulous, Installous, Appsync and AppTrackr.org. Crackulous was a program for hacking apps purchased from the App Store and putting them up on various file sharing websites. Installous was used to find apps in a database called "dannyh" and to download and install apps. It worked just like the regular App Store, except all the paid apps were pirated. AppSync allowed you to install cracked apps from Installous through iTunes on a desktop PC. AppTrackr.org was a database of hacked applications.

Report by : Shunal Doke

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