Desai tells police he was only trying to find iOS flaws and report them to Apple for the sake of collecting bug bounties and acclaim. Reportedly, he was only trying to prank friends with the public post and slipped up by releasing the wrong code.

It's not certain that a judge and jury will sympathize with Desai's account of events. If this really was a mistake, it still had serious repercussions. What if 911 really had gone down, or had been late to responding to real calls? Whatever the truth may be, the bust emphasizes how fragile emergency phone services can be. As Softpedia observes, researchers have learned that it could take just 6,000 smartphones to completely flood a state's 911 system. Given that it took a relatively mild incident to bring one region's system to its knees, 911 providers will want to beef up their defenses if they expect to survive larger, more deliberate attacks.