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Hackers Finally Unlock iPhone 3G

Posted by Soulskill on from the information-and-iphones-want-to-be-free dept.

nandemoari quotes a story at Infopackets: "2009 has gotten off to a great start for a team of iPhone enthusiasts with little regard for Apple's licensing requirements. They've finally figured out a way to get the phone to work with any cell phone carrier (and not just AT&T). The iPhone Dev Team is best known for their work on 'jailbreaking;' the technique of altering an iPhone so that you can run any applications on it, not just those approved by Apple. Given the company's questionable vetting policy for entry to the official App store, it's not surprising many users approve of jailbreaking."

3 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Finally by schmidt349 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Um, you should probably watch the iPhone Dev Team's recent presentation at CCC if you want to sound like you have any idea what you're talking about. This wasn't some simple privilege escalation coming out of a buffer overflow in the web browser. Apple signs the shit out of every binary on the phone. The kernel won't execute a binary in userland unless it's signed; the firmware loader won't execute the kernel unless it's signed; the low-level bootloader won't execute the firmware loader unless it's signed.

    The iPhone 3G is a paragon of embedded device security, at least by way of making sure unapproved code doesn't run on the device, and it's a testament to just how amazing the iPhone Dev Team guys are that they actually found a way to (a) defeat the whole chain of trust in the iPhone firmware in order to jailbreak it. This by the way doesn't even take into account their real genius, the hack into the baseband firmware for the S-Gold radio device, which executes code in its own universe, completely separate from the S5L application processor.

    In short, this hack wasn't some bunch of script kiddies having a sleepover and cracking the copy protection on Arkanoid 2 for the C64. This was a brilliant circumvention of some of the tightest security ever found on a PDA or mobile phone. So please don't disrespect the people who made it possible.

  2. Rather than linking to some random blog... by oPless · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why not link to http://blog.iphone-dev.org/ themselves ?

    Oh wait ... this is /.

    My Bad.

  3. Re:I do not understand... by mr100percent · · Score: 5, Informative

    Haptic response?
    If that's the case, why do critics HATE the Blackberry storm and rumor has it that Verizon is dealing with a ton of returns?

    Just get firemail for iPhone and type your emails in landscape mode