I was just reading an article yesterday that explained how each application running on the phone ran as root. After reading the article I was wondering what is stopping someone from writing an application with a few lines of code which contained a “rm -rf /” command. This I believe since Mac is Unix based would erase everything on the phone pretty much since the application would run on root. Am I correct that this would render the phone unusable (aka bricked) After this it would be only to easy to put this application on a repository and just I suppose false advertise it. Well I should stop rambling here, the real question I am trying to ask is, is this a very serious thing to consider when installing new repositories? I have been installing application from a variety of repositories some of which I had never heard of and didn't think of this issue until this. Any opinions guys?

YES it coudl happen, but i think thats why some sources come up right away in installer stating untrusted source, as no on verifies apps on these sources.

I'm very sure within the 1st post of such an app person woudl post it bricked my phone, etc... so others woudl know. I beleive there was a sticker here or at MMI, when someone posted a fake 1.1.3 jailbreak weeks before actually jailbroken and beleive it fubared up some peoples iphones taht needed a restore than.

But then again, someoen coudl make a good app and then tiembomb for days/weeks/months/years in advance. Its just the chance we take with 3rd party apps.