Facebook for iPad Leak Access Blocked

Remember all the way back this morning when we reported on the leaked version of the official Facebook app for iPad? Turns out the folks at Facebook were none too happy about that leak and have taken some action. This leaked version was available to jailbroken iPad units (jailbroken being the iOS version of "rooted" for those of you on the other side of the spectrum, all of these terms essentially meaning "hacked.") This Monday afternoon, however, the fun was fully over (at least for the time being) as Facebook officials blocked logins through the app, so says CPU Engineering Undergrad Marvin Bernal.

This fellow who releases updates on his exploits through Twitter announced at approximately 12 NOON Central Standard Time that he'd discovered the Facebook app in question to have logins disabled. This referring to the version found buried deep within Version 3.4.4 for iPhone, an update that appeared on the App Store this past Friday. Other than having a hidden iPad version of itself embedded in its guts, this update was supposed to fix several crash bugs as well as restoring the official Send button to several screens in the app.

This is part of the futuristic world where app developers are able to create apps that work on both the iPhone and the iPad in one, using a universal binary which sees the device its working on and delivers that solution as its primary self. All hackers had to do to activate the iPad version of the app was change "UIDeviceFamily", a setting inside the app, to the number "2." Imagine that.

This situation points toward a couple of possibilities. One, that Facebook will indeed be releasing an update for the official iOS Facebook app that allows it to work on the iPad without needing the x2 up-sizing button. Second, it could mean that this long delay was kept in place because Zuckerberg and crew were waiting to get Skype integration working before an iPad version was released.

Either way, here comes Facebook on iPad! Meanwhile we suggest you keep using Friendly Plus for Facebook as it's the greatest thing since sliced bread for Facebook on iPad.

[via Computerworld]