With the release of iTunes 7.5 a while back one user noticed some interesting strings in the new iTunes 7.5 binary. The strings of code point towards the future existence of some kind of rental facility on the iTunes Store.

In September one user discovered a temporary glitch in Apple’s reporting system.

The following strings were found within iTunes 7.5:

rental-content

rental-bag

rbsync

source-rental-info

dest-rental-info

getvodaccountselectionlist

GET VOD ACCOUNT SELECTION LIST

supportsRentals

Now it seems that an astute iPhone hacker has come across similar strings in the latest iPhone update. The strings of code are contained within the ‘lockdownd’ file which basically authorises anything coming in or out of the phone as well as being responsible for all communication between iPhone and the computer.

A string search through the lockdownd executable in /usr/libexec produced the following hits when searched for “rental”:

pumpkin:~ pumpkin$ strings /usr/local/share/iphone-filesystem/usr/libexec/lockdownd | grep -i rental
trigger_rental_bag_verification: Could not retrieve FairPlayID
trigger_rental_bag_verification: Could not initialize FairPlay context
trigger_rental_bag_verification: Could not verify the rental bag response: %d
load_rental_bag_request: Could not retrieve FairPlayID
load_rental_bag_request: Could not initialize FairPlay context
load_rental_bag_request: Could not generate rental bag request
load_rental_bag_request: Could not create mutable dictionary
load_rental_bag_request: Could not create CFData from request message
load_rental_bag_request: Could not create CFArray
load_rental_bag_request: Could not create CFNumber from indice
RentalBagResponse
RentalBagRequest
pumpkin:~ pumpkin$