iPhone Unlocked

Update 7/19:  People now have a working toolchain for building apps for the iPhone.  I can’t wait to see the cool hacks that follow.  Also, It’s now possible to use the iPhone with a variety of pre-paid plans that use AT&Ts network, and, custom iPhone ringtones for Windows and Mac.

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There are lots of sites making claims about unlocking the iPhone. For now, I won’t link to any of them.

A lot are sites that claim that they are just about ready to sell unlocked iPhones. I don’t link to them because I think they are probably lying to get attention for various nefarious purposes.

There is another site that is making real, credible progress, though there is no telling how much further they have to go, or whether Apple will be able to hold off their efforts with frequent software updates. I’m not linking to them either, because they’ve asked not to be linked to so they can save bandwidth and hold down the amount of vandalism on their wiki. I’m going to honor their request, even though it seems like the cat is out of the bag with lots of other blogs and publications linking directly to their site.

I will name the site though. They call themselves the iPhone Dev Wik, and they are a subdomain of an innocuously named .com domain. It serves as a connection point for iPhone hackers distributed around the country collaborating via IRC. In the past few days they’ve been able to accomplish a lot, including:

• close to decrypting the activation process
• close to cracking the software update process
• ability to read files on the device, but only with in a sandbox containing music files

There are other reports that people have been able to crack the root password.
Other summaries

• The Register
• TechMeme

Update 7/19:  People now have a working toolchain for building apps for the iPhone.  I can’t wait to see the cool hacks that follow.  Also, It’s now possible to use the iPhone with a variety of pre-paid plans that use AT&Ts network, and, custom iPhone ringtones for Windows and Mac.