WARNING Vroom is fake

Author: BigBoss  //  Category: Apps, Jailbreak, News

Update: Appsidy will issue a refund to everyone that bought this in the next 5-7 days.

Today some developer released a “pay” package called “Vroom” which sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, it is. Do not install this package. Not only does it not do what it claims, but it is also somewhat dangerous and will wear out your iPhone with limited use. Read below for details. (Note: Zodttd has removed this package from Cydia, but it may creep up somewhere else).

First, this package claims to speed up your iphone, increase your free memory by managing your daemons, and increase your battery usage. Sounds amazing right? Who wouldnt want this?

So what does it really do? It enables memory swap on your device.

What are the results of memory swap on your device? The free memory will appear to be better. That’s because it is using your disk as memory.  But that’s not all. This package is actually just a stolen file that is already on your device, renamed. So that means the “developer” decided to take a file off his iPhone, rename it, and sell it to you for $1.99.

Here is proof that the file is stolen. The original file is dynamic_pager that is provided by Apple in your /sbin folder. The new file from this app is called Vroom_data. Check out the md5sum of both proving that the files are identical:

BigBoss-iPhone:~ root# md5sum /sbin/dynamic_pager
e57afa9289e98fbd336eff14b996370a  /sbin/dynamic_pager
BigBoss-iPhone:~ root# md5sum /sbin/Vroom_data
e57afa9289e98fbd336eff14b996370a  /sbin/Vroom_data

Ok so the package is fraud.

But if you already have dynamic_pager, whats the harm in enabling it? The reason you don’t want memory swap enabled on your iPhone is this:

1) Memory swap will create a disk file on your flash disk. The CPU will need to spend I/O cycles reading and writing to this disk file. The I/O cycles will cost you battery because it takes battery power to do disk writes.

2) Flash disk has limited life span. They say some 100,000 writes per sector then it is dead. Having a swap file running will be quickly writing to the same sectors wearing out your flash disk.

3) Writing to a page file takes some CPU cycles.

Now, lets examine the developer’s claims and compare them to what the package actually does:

Claim #1: Increases memory.  Sort of. It creates a disk swap. Result is iphone will appear to have more memory. Some apps may crash less. This isn’t all bad. (I think I will release a free package that enables disk swap with a strong warning on it for those that want this).

Claim #2: Manages your daemons. FALSE / lies. It is the apple dynamic_pager file. It does only that. It does not manage your daemons.

Claim #3: It speeds up your device: FALSE. In fact, disk swap actually slows down the device because there are extra disk write used in order to access memory.

Claim #4: It provides better battery performance: FALSE. In fact it actually causes your battery to drain faster because of the disk write I/O cycles and the extra CPU required.

Claim #5: It allows your iPhone to boot at 2% rather than 15% battery. FALSE. This is built into the device not the iPhone OS. (Just like DFU mode). You cannot make changes to this.

Claim #6: It allows your iPhone to run until there is 1% battery rather than 5% before it shuts off. FALSE. See #5 above.

Finally, the package in Cydia was packaged incorrectly. Daemon plist was owned by user 1000. Launchctl will not load any daemon not owned by root. This caused the daemon to not start. With that bug, the paging system is not even enabled resulting in no change in performance! (LOL again). Anyone claiming to install this and finding a boost in speed, battery, etc is experiencing the placebo effect.

This all reminds me of the scam last year with the fake app I dont crash. At least that guy wasn’t trying to charge you money.

Note: enabling memory swap also seems to break google maps app.


BigBoss Authors: Mark Bruce & Kory Lee

44 Responses to “WARNING Vroom is fake”

  1. ZodTTD Says:

    Yes, this program seems fishy to say the least. I am in contact with MacCiti and I have removed it from the repo. I am putting measures in place to prevent this from happening again.

    Thanks BigBoss and phoenix for the heads up!

  2. poison Says:

    I’ve installed and paid for it but have since removed it. I knew it was too good to be true.

    For some reason my maps is no longer working along with others i talk to on Twitter.

    Please any advice BigBoss?

    Thank you again!

  3. poison Says:

    Whew! After a reboot my Maps is working again. Thank goodness.

  4. Rene818 Says:

    Actually the Map issues was happening to a lot of people who didn’t have the vroom tweak installed. Wonder what could of caused the issue..

  5. c Says:

    bigboss be keepin them hoes in line

  6. liljake119 Says:

    ya serioiusly look up “VM on iphone” or “iphone virtual memory mod”. its exactly the same as what bigboss is saying. it IS what he is saying. and it is using flashmemory more often. that drains ur battery faster! and yupp it installs 2 plist files associated with apples dynamic pager. that has nothing do do with ur battery boot/die percentage. its all false and stolen. i hope this gets removed and people that bought this are refunded. its like paying for some tools mod of pwnage tool or blackra1n. get a refund

  7. liljake119 Says:

    …please take legal action, bigboss

  8. ibnyaffa Says:

    what i want to understand is how u talk bad about it and claim its false when u have not even tried the tweak…. BB try the tweak then speak…

  9. ruben Says:

    he says he did – so answer his questions

  10. BigBoss Says:

    Yes, I have tried the tweak. Further, the VM mod you stole has been around for over a year. I have used it then as well. I am quite familiar with it. The only difference with your mod is you made outlandish claims and charged people.

  11. mklpickle Says:

    uuummm….I’m not saying I bought this, but…..can I have my money back?? Thanks ibnyaffa for making me even more wary of purchasing apps….I hope you’re a penny short of buying two items on the McDonalds dollar menu!

  12. iPhonemodz702 Says:

    awesome! thanks for making a fake tweak ibnyaffa you have ripped off sooo many with this!!!

  13. metaclam Says:

    For many months, I have had installed a package called iPhoneVM 2. This claims to enable VRAM and from what I’ve seen it works well on my 3G. It has allowed me to use memory-hog apps that before just crashed. It’s probably slowed down some things, true. But I’d rather have a bit of a performance hit than not be able to use the apps due to the limited RAM on the 3G. But now I worry about what BB is saying about disk writes to Flash. I assume the same problem applies, correct? Should I now uninstall it, or has damage been done? Is this iPhoneVM any less “fake”?

  14. ChaoticMayhem Says:

    And thats why this is a must visit site for any jailbreaker! Thanks for the heads up BB.

  15. mklpickle Says:

    Has this question been answered? Is there any lasting consequences from installing then uninstalling? If so, is there a fix?

    Thanks for your help BB!!!

  16. Pyroskees Says:

    Correct. Any repeated writing and rewriting of flash will diminish its longevity, as flash is only capable of 100,000 rewrites before you start to see it ware. Keep it only if you’re not worried about your iDevice dying prematurely, or plan on getting a new phone soon. According to wiki, “Most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand around 100,000 write-erase-cycles, before the wear begins to deteriorate the integrity of the storage.”

  17. billchase2 Says:

    Thanks for the information! We all appreciate it!

  18. BigBoss Says:

    You installed that package with no false pretenses. That package is the exact same as this one. The only difference is that package only claims to enable page file, is free, and did not claim to improve battery, speed, etc.

    There is no such thing as “the damage is done” in this. Continual disk writes are always a risk, but you can stop it at any time.

  19. eflamenco Says:

    im running this on a iphone2g and it worked for me.. i dont care if it was already out..some people didnt know about it til now.. + all the profit was going to Haiti so i dont understand why you guys just dont appreciate the work.. IBN has released many many other mods for iphone that he has done from scratch and no one complained then when they were free. Oh well. he tweaked a tweak.. is that how anything gets done better. someone had to tweak the airplane to make it better right?????

  20. Aaron Says:

    I seriously doubt that any of those profits went to Haiti. I’m sure that as someone said before me, he’s probably a penny short of two items on the Dollar Menu at McDonald’s.

  21. eflamenco Says:

    you guys dont know..
    he went to haiti to help out
    he lives in the US and flew down there
    you guys just have him all wrong

  22. Aaron Says:

    You don’t know either, it’s a thousand times more likely he’s lying and you fell for his trap. How about you just make a normal two dollar donation to a legitimate charity for Haiti?

  23. eflamenco Says:

    i do know him as a matter a fact, ive worked with him before, he never likes to takes donations for custom work he does as request
    how do you know any of the donations are making it to haiti.. just bc there are celebs out there saying donate this this charity doesnt mean they are getting there..they are probably going into there pocket.. all these charities just happend to pop up from no where.. its the same thing..

    but like ive said. hes done plenty of other work other than this one and never charges for it

  24. Crude Says:

    @eflamenco:
    You state: “hes done plenty of other work other than this one and never charges for it”
    I ask: why charge for this one if he hasn’t charged before??? You are saying in an earlier post that he tweaked a tweak… Wow… back in the day when I started out in computing they didn’t call it “tweaking”, they simply called it “renaming”…

  25. Kitcat490 Says:

    Lol, I’m not ripped off, I stole it because I expected a scam.

  26. Aber Says:

    Thank you BigBoss for exposing this app as a fake and informing users with the facts. I support your decision to ban the (quasi) Dev from this site and am supremely disappointed in his behavior. Unfortunately, I regretfully admit to being “had” by his outlandish description of this “too good to be true” application. He should be banished from this entire community forever.

  27. Aber Says:

    Oh, and thanks for initiating measures to prevent this from happening again. You guys rock!

  28. xxdesmus Says:

    I’ve tried the disk swap hack in the past and I can confirm that it appeared that I had more memory. The phone was just as stable, the battery life did lower drastically, and apps would still crash on occasion — translation: it’s a waste of time.

  29. zausser Says:

    the dev did what what most of us do or want when we jailbreak our devices. Look to dress it up with cool themes, skins and tweaks and mods.

    I’ll put it in a way that may make a little more sense. I’m a motor-sport freak. I want to squeeze all I can get out of my motor. I’ll add a exhaust, high flow cats, intake power chips, turbo, blower on and on… More power equals more fun. Sure that doing this may shorten the life of my motor but I want the most out of it while I own it. The simple fact is my car will most likely be stolen, totaled, sold or traded in/upgraded before the engine dies do to my mods.

    Like my phone… It’s kind of funny because this is just a phone but I feel the same way. I want to get the most out of it while I have it and enjoy it to the fullest. Yes my phone MAY have a shorter life span but I’m already on my third device and I’ll bet I have a new one before any damage is seen by all my mods and tweaks.

    I’m deeply sad the way this was all handled and how some people on the internet use there name and power to bring down the name of another. My dad once told me that your name is the most important thing you have. You may not have the money, toys, luxuries that the next person has but you have your name.

    The dev you’re referring to donated $150,000.00 to Haiti! He is an amazing person and I thank him for everything he did and does for this community and for people in need. You are the type of person I like to be around. As I said before I’m honored to call you my friend.

    I do dare the people that are slinging your name in the mud to match your donation or if they don’t have the funds to at least do what they can.

    Peace

  30. phoenix3200 Says:

    Sorry, but I don’t see how this dev would have access to $150k. And if he did, why would he accept donations for his work or even bother selling something thru Cydia?

    This “excuse” does not excuse his theft or false description. He resold something which was already available for free elsewhere (e.g. he had no intellectual property claim for this), and he was distributing code which he had no legal right to do such.

  31. kwickone Says:

    I don’t think the dev “stole” anything, per se. I think he was trying to contribute, and created a tweak which he may have thought was original. That being said, I think BigBoss’ findings are also legitimate. The dev made claims that were either not researched appropriately, or are downright guesses. Yes, the tweak may appear to give you more memory…but the rest of the claims appear to be quite incorrect. I have no opinion on the whole “donate” thing. If he did in fact donate all that money to a good cause, well that is awesome.

  32. Krs Says:

    Guys, why are you saying that he stole something to mod it a bit and sell after?

    This jailbreak world dudes, everything is ripped off and moded to create something else.

    How! How come you say that the file was apples own? The iPhones FW is apples own too!
    And there we are making custom FW…

    I mean, stop being so Ingenous.
    And think for a sec!

    Now, don’t tell me… Ah ok ok everything ok but, why is he selling it? Guys, that was for Haiti. You don’t believe it? You can’t believe it. Fine, go and check his new threat at macciti… Now, if you don’t want to believe. well, I wish you luck in your life… Cuz, a person whit a closed mind like many of you here… Do not go far in life.

    Now, I font understand why “bigboss” is being so rude with ibnyaffa.
    Many people say that it is because you (“bigboss”) want to be the owner of this tweak and have full credits.

    Seriously, I can’t say anything. I don’t know.

  33. patrese Says:

    I know the dev personally since a very long time and I can and will vouch for him always.
    The whole thing went wrong with packaging of the first deb.. Which was not his fault. The update works just fine.
    I think it’s appauling that people will just follow each other like sheep without forming their own opinions.
    The guy deserves more, way more, and I for one know that he is an honest soul that would never hurt a fly. Let alone ripping people off or scamming or whatever he has been accused of.

    I’ll back you up always man, I’m sorry you have to go through ll this mess. You of all people don’t deserve that.

    max patrese.

  34. Anonymous Says:

    This TwEEK and I say tweek cause that’s all he’s claimed it is from the begining all of us at Macciti have known about this for sometime now and he has Always said it been out there he just made it better! I also am on a 2g which is y I have it if I was on 3gs or 3g probably wouldn’t need as others have said and really u plan on haveing ur phone fir ur entire life hell no as soon as a new 1 comes out you will all b running to get another so why not use it to it fullest potential? It’s a freaking phone for gods sake! Ur more likely to crack the screen or drop it in the toilet B4 the freaking thing dies! And I’ll tell you this this man Is genuine! All the money is going to haiti! No doubt in my mind I’ve damn near talk to this person everyday for help and to chat and he has NEVER ever asked 4 anything and I was also there when he went to Haiti to help and was almost hurt from the crap that going on so judge if u must but have any of you done anything like that! I doubt it! I haven’t!!

  35. PhanaticD Says:

    i do not get why people are defending this guy, he clearly blatantly lied,this is the [dangerous?] iphoneVM thing and not a daemon manager. im just glad no one cracked it or i woulda got it based on that info =P ..all haiti funds and such aside- this is a clearly a lie, whether for a good cause or not. i wouldnt pickpocket people to give to haiti either..

  36. BigBoss Says:

    1) He stole a file that was already on your iphone, renamed it, distributed it, and sold it. He stole a plist provided a year ago for free in vm memory projects, and sold that. He did not do any original work. If this were all for free, and described properly, I would never have spoken up. But instead he was taking money from people for things that were either already free or available on your device already. Unacceptable.

    2) Jailbreak community is generally very careful not to steal anything in order to keep Apple off our backs. All the jailbreaks do not redistribute any Apple code. So “everything is ripped off” is really not true at all.

    3) The file he redistributed is on everyone’s iPhone already in /sbin/dynamic_pager. You can find it with ifile or ssh. (As a note to yaffa, he did at least repack his latest deb and removed the stolen file. That much is good).

    4) If a person lies about 10 things, I cant believe that the 11th thing is true. Maybe yaffa didnt lie but really believed the stuff he said about the battery. I don’t really know. But if he is a developer of a product, I expect him to accurately know what the product does. It is common knowledge that the memory paging trick, which has been around for a year, increases memory by using a paging file. This is commonly known that you are sacrificing speed (performance) and battery for gaining the ability to run multiple apps. If Yaffa accurately described the tweak and gave it out for free, I would have no issues.

  37. ws6967 Says:

    Hi, BigBoss,

    As you guys may ahve noticed that we iPhone users are suffering from the sluggish performance of iPhone 2G/3G. As technical gurus like yourselves, do you think you can develop a software/app that help regain the orginal performance of the CPU?
    Not a 412MHz, castrated ARM CPU?

    If that’s doable,please send me an email and I’d like to be the first one to PAY for a software like that. Thanks.

  38. Dave Says:

    Hi BigBoss, first of all I want to thank you for all your hard work. I wasn’t one of those to try this tweak but I’ve been using a deamon that I think may do the same thing, just didn’t have to pay for it. This is the deamon:
    com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist
    Could you please tell me if this works just like Vroom and has the same consequences, I’m new to all this and I’m still trying to learn. Thank you so much for your help, keep up the great work you do for all of us jailbreakers. Have a great day, rock on.

  39. Anonymous Says:

    Thanks for all BB.
    And your answers are clever.

  40. Brad Says:

    I don’t understand how people can defend this guy when he blatantly copied and renamed a file that he didn’t create and passed it off as his own, as evidenced by the identical MD5 sums on both files. Regardless of how much money he may or may not have donated to Haiti, he still ripped many decent people off and there’s no fucking way anybody with a brain can defend an act like that. Tbh I expected this thing to be a scam from the start what with all the blathering about “i donate to haiti gais so u no i’m legit bro n i’m ttly well known so buy my app 4 haiti!!” lol.

  41. K.Nitsua Says:

    I’m not gonna pretend that I know everything about this tweak, nor will I pretend that I fully understand everything you guys are saying against it. But if there needs to be a character defense on someone in the jailbreak community, it’s for Ibnyaffa.

    He’s a good man, and has been very selfless. It seems all of this could potentially have stemmed from a misunderstanding: if I were to find that plist and see that the RAM is high and remains high – I, too, will assume better battery and performance.

    Ibnyaffa probably found this (unaware of its previous existence) and thought this would be a good way to raise money for Haiti. This guy has been living and breathing Haiti since the disaster – so THAT part is legit.

    Seriously, cut the guy some slack. If anything, he’s guilty of not fully understanding the tweak.

    BigBoss is right to bring awareness to this; and if I was him I’d probably be just as outraged and lash out in a similar fashion. If someone was ripping off the good people of the jailbreak community, burn him at the stake!

    But he isn’t trying to rip people off – this isn’t that case. I’m amazed that Ibnyaffa hasn’t entirely LEFT the community.

    BigBoss, I’ve worked with you before and you’ve been tremendously helpful to the jailbreak community and a level guy. But so is Ibnyaffa – he’s helpful and a level guy as well.

    So, in closing, give the man the little slap on the wrist – fix the issue, and let’s move on. No more mudslinging, no more trash talking.

    Kumbaya, people… KUM… BAY… YA!!!! =P

  42. Stoned Says:

    Pagefiles are not anything new… It has been around since a way to store information was developed. Anyone that claims to be a developer would know exactly what a pagefile is. Again it is nothing new and never will be anything else. And it’s rather obvious if one stops to think about it for just seconds that there would never be any battery gain or speed gain by its use.

    More “virtual” ram is “nice” when your system is really bogged down and out of date, but never is it like istalling a turbo on your car. More like putting glass packs on your car to make it look and sound better, but no actuall improvement are made.

  43. ipod touch (1g)3.1.3 Says:

    why do peoples copy apps when they can make them self? theats the bad, and sells it for money? it’s just an app. and:do not buy/get a free app there the info says:this speed up iphones and ipod touch!.

  44. Githa Says:

    Walking in the presence of gnatis here. Cool thinking all around!

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