Tag Archive for 'hacks'

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iPhone Hacking Update: Regrouping 7/9/07

Published on July 9, 2007 in apple, iphone and unlock. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

It looks like the access to the serial console, which seemed so promising just a few days ago, has dead ended against a well-locked gate. Fortunately, there are still other fronts for attack

Latest Progress Report – The iPhone Dev Wiki
July 9, 2007 2:50AM Eastern Update

The bootloader is basically a dead end. Everything that goes into it must be signed, and without apples 1024-bit RSA private key, this isn’t going to happen. Fortunately we have another in. We have basically full command over the file system and can upload, copy, and run files. I’ll say this, ringtones would be a *trivial* thing to do now. We know the radio is accessible though software from from thisbbupdate dump. Once the toolchain is working, we can write a program to write to /dev/tty.baseband, and finally unlock thi thing.

-dev team

Update: They’ve compromised the root filesystem, which should open opportunities for ringtones, custom icons, and potentially, custom apps, including unlocking programs.

Serial Access to the iPhone Console — iPhone Hacking News Update (Noon 7/6/07)

Published on July 6, 2007 in apple and iphone. Closed Tags: , , .

Update (7/10): They’ve compromised the root filesystem, which should open opportunities for ringtones, custom icons, and potentially, custom apps, including unlocking programs.

—-

I just scanned the IRC logs for #iphone and it looks like they’ve made a major breakthrough. They are working on verifying it before making an announcement. I’ll post an update as soon as I know more.

<gj> just had a little bit of a breakthrough folks
<gj> stay tuned
<gj> this is definitely not a small breakthrough
<gj> let us verify

…

<gj> MAJOR announcement
<gj> and I do mean MAJOR
<gj> we now OWN serial on this device
<gj> documents coming shortly
<gj> the significance of this
<gj> is that we can now probably access the baseband of the radio
<gj> and issue our unlock commands though we are a little ways off
<gj> please be patient and do NOT interrupt anyone
<gj> thanks

<gj> =======================
<gj> ::
<gj> :: iBoot, Copyright 2007, Apple Inc.
<gj> ::
<gj> :: BUILD_TAG: iBoot-159
<gj> ::
<gj> :: BUILD_STYLE: RELEASE
<gj> ::
<gj> =======================================
<gj> merlot_init() — Universal code version 05-16-07
<gj> DVT testing – display pclk running now
<gj> Merlot Panel ID (0x71c200): Build: PVT1 Type: TMD Project/Driver: M68/NatSemi
<gj> ClcdInstallGammaTable: Found Gamma table 0x0000c200 / 0x0000ff70
<gj> usb_menu_init()
<gj> patch_list: 1801f6ac, patch_count: b

List of available commands.

Update (7/10): They’ve compromised the root filesystem, which should open opportunities for ringtones, custom icons, and potentially, custom apps, including unlocking programs.

iPhone Unlocking Update 7/6: Commerical Efforts

Published on July 6, 2007 in activation, apple and unlock. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

The press has been picking up on some commercial efforts to unlock the iPhone.

Newzeland’s Computer World reports on John McLaughlin who is the founder of Belfast, UK-based UniquePhones.  McLaughlin said he has engineers working around the clock in several countries who are close to cracking the security Apple has set up to ensure customers can only use iPhones with AT&T Wireless service.

On July 3rd, his website claimed to be close to making a public announcement about cracking the activation, but so far, nothing.  Meanwhile, a public hacking effort has already announced their own success on the activation front, as has “DVD Jon.”

The Register also has a version of the same story.

iPhone Hacking News Update: A Productive Day

Published on July 5, 2007 in activation, apple and unlock. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

It has been a busy day for the sleepless iPhone hackers. They released two tools, and have made a lot of progress, including figuring out how to manipulate the boot loader, and figuring out how to unlock the phone once they can get appropriate access to the radio.

Boot Loader
We’ve successfully issued commands to the boot loader. So far, we’ve been limited to power off, but have made significant progress on issuing other commands. Some of the commands are radio commands, and this is our key to wealth and prosperity. :-)
UnlockingWe know how to unlock the phone, so the question now is whether we can get the commands to the radio or not. We don’t believe our method is the only method, but assuming that with the help of some very smart folks we can get access to the radio, the firmware should be trivial to unlock.
iPhoneInterface
iPhoneInterface details are available in my earlier post

Hardware side
We are working some prototype circuitry which once understood, will allow us to access the debug capabilities of the phone. Stay tuned for more on this, as I don’t have up-to-date information on this yet.

SVN
A public subversion server should be up by 1:00AM Eastern.

Public read-only SVN at http://iphonesvn.halifrag.com/svn/iPhone/

Again, I’m not posting a link to the actual Wiki because they’ve asked people not to in order to preserve performance and reduce vandalism so they can continue to use it productively.

iPhone Hacking News Update: iPhoneInterface Tool is Out!!

Published on July 5, 2007 in apple. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

Update: There is now a GUI application for unlocking the iPhone that simplifies things greatly.

Update 7/28: The latest news is that someone has created a basic but functioning GUI app for the iPhone. This comes just a few days after people started compiling a range of open source command line apps for the iPhone.

—-

Hot on the heels of the announcement of the iPhone Activation tool, the team behind all the work on the iPhone Dev Wiki is getting ready to release their iPhone Interface Tool, which has an amazing set of features, and more are coming. This is an update they issued a little while ago with their plans for the tool.

We have successfully written a tool named iPhoneInterface allowing for some basic manipulation of things on the phone, and are releasing it tonight. We are including source code so you can understand the techniques we have used so far. We will be expanding the functionality of this tool significantly tomorrow. The best news is that we have prototype code that allows the ability to:

  • Run any desired application already residing on the phone.
  • Control what processes run on the phone (currently implementation is very hackish)
  • Move files around on the phone
  • Enable viewing of verbose information during the restore process
  • Activate the phone without iTunes and without a token

Note: Not all of the features listed above are necessarily included in tonight’s initial release.

We are continuing significant work on this tool and will probably have similarly worthwhile updates tomorrow.

I should note that right now, if you aren’t working on hacking the iPhone yourself, this release is primarily interesting for academic reasons. Still, this opens iPhone hacking to an even larger group, which will hopefully mean that the end-user useful features will be coming even sooner. Right now though, we are still in the early days so don’t expect too much from these early releases.

Link to tool:

Windows & Mac.

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