Siri Protocol Cracked, But Unique iPhone 4S ID Requirement Hampers Distribution

Applidium, the developers who brought the open source video player VLC to the App Store only to have it pulled over licensing issues, have announced that they have reverse engineered the protocol used to allow Siri to communicate with Apple's servers. Citing an example in which they were able to communicate with Siri servers directly from a computer, the developers note that they were able to have the servers recognize and analyze their voice input just as if it had originated from an iPhone 4S.

Today, we managed to crack open Siri’s protocol. As a result, we are able to use Siri’s recognition engine from any device. Yes, that means anyone could now write an Android app that uses the real Siri! Or use Siri on an iPad! And we’re going to share this know-how with you.

Unfortunately for those hoping to make use of Siri in their apps on iOS or other platforms, the protocol is set up to transmit a unique identifier for a given iPhone 4S. The developers at Applidium were able to extract that identifier from one of their devices and use it to authenticate their non-iPhone Siri input, but such code would likely not survive being included in an application packaged for distribution, as Apple's servers would presumably be able to easily identify and blacklist any device identifier generating excessive usage from multiple locations.

The developers do note, however, that the proof of concept demonstration may prove interesting for developers looking to play around with non-iPhone 4S implementations of Siri for their personal use.