iPhone Dev Team claims to be dismantled, Pwnage tool dead for good? Update: nope.

April Fool's day joke? Could be, but we're hearing it might be real: the long standing bastions of iPhone hacking, the iPhone Dev Team, posted a note to their site stating that "[today] the DevTeam was approached by an unnamed party to sell all of the intellectual property and related applications. After much consideration [What, hours? -Ed.] the offer was accepted and the [Dev Team] has ceased." Seems a bit outlandish. For those not in the know, the Dev Team is the same group that posted jailbreaks to 2.0 (before it was out), 1.1.3, 1.1.1, developed the AnySIM unlock, and are thiiiis close to releasing the Pwnage tool (which promised total unsigned firmware control of the iPhone). So yeah, it may well be a prank, we wouldn't put it past them. Funny thing about the hacker community though, one goes down and 10 more spring up.

[Thanks Andrew, Erica]

Update: Yep, it's an April Fool's joke. We're just going to go offline until April 2nd, peace.

[01 @ Mar 31st 2008 7:12PM]

I'm not really sure what they are "selling" here...the code that automagically jailbreaks the phone? FSJ probably considers this his best purchase ever...

[Tom @ Mar 31st 2008 8:02PM]

Sorry for hijacking your early post for a reply, but download all their stuff from google code before it's pulled:

http://code.google.com/p/iphone-elite/

QUICK!

[Brad @ Mar 31st 2008 7:13PM]

noooooooooooooooo

As I write this from my jailbroken iPod touch

[Khris @ Mar 31st 2008 9:54PM]

LAME April Fools joke!!

I repeat.....LAME!!!

[Steve Pan @ Mar 31st 2008 7:14PM]

Something tells me this mysterious third entity is Apple.

[Shane Lloyd @ Mar 31st 2008 7:15PM]

Could have been AT&T too.

Aside from those wanting to unlock to run on another carrier, the who hacking thing for the iPhone is going to be pretty redundant anyway. We're going to get a ton of real, high-quality Apps (both free and paid) in June.

The people who want to mickey-mouse it will still find ways. I need to know my phone will work everyday and with every update, however, so, I'm looking forward to real third party apps.

[Tony Bowman @ Mar 31st 2008 7:15PM]

so they just up and quit? sold out? WEAK.

probably to some overseas grey/black market iphone dealer, to be used for iPhones in markets Apple hasn't officially gotten into.

[01 @ Mar 31st 2008 7:22PM]

(laughs) because we all know how morally stable hackers are.

[sinai @ Mar 31st 2008 9:50PM]

except most hackers/crackers/etc see themselves as robin hoods and not criminals

[Chris @ Mar 31st 2008 10:05PM]

The biggest one to get pranked was Apple, Steve

Jobs probably said boom! and every one celebrated.

Until one of them clicked refresh and the partying

stopped. APRIL FOOLS!!!

[Peter @ Mar 31st 2008 7:16PM]

something tells me that aprils fools jokes are better when they arent on april fools

[J.C. @ Mar 31st 2008 7:16PM]

Its obviously April fools... Mark my words...

[16 Coming through Roofless @ Mar 31st 2008 7:16PM]

............. sellouts.

[Tony Bowman @ Mar 31st 2008 7:17PM]

at&t or apple is absurd. if they wanted the iPhone dev team to stop, they would just drown them in cease and desist letters and lawyers.

[Steve @ Mar 31st 2008 7:22PM]

Do you actually think an underground group of hackers gives a damn about cease and desist letters?

[Tony Bowman @ Mar 31st 2008 7:27PM]

everyone cares about getting sued, you moron.

[Steve @ Mar 31st 2008 7:30PM]

You obviously don't know many /underground/ hackers...

[starkruzr @ Mar 31st 2008 7:30PM]

Cease and desist letters for *what*? Everything they're doing is completely legal and doesn't break copyright.

[Charlie Calhoun @ Mar 31st 2008 7:19PM]

I think they're right though, one team of developers is gone, and all it will do is make more... well.. Devolopers Developers Developers Developers. Point being, maybe this third party was Microsoft, wanting to get in on some iPhone hacking...

[eightySixFilms @ Mar 31st 2008 8:34PM]

Maybe apple's brought them on to work on the iphone legit style.

[Shane Lloyd @ Mar 31st 2008 7:23PM]

I doubt Microsoft would be into so blatantly undermining its competitors. No, it's more into behind the scenes, sneaky undermining, where you don't recognize you've been screwed over until you're out on your ass.

[Kurt @ Mar 31st 2008 7:22PM]

they should have just changed the website to say

Your Mom's Box

[Kyle @ Mar 31st 2008 8:49PM]

linger longer!!!!!!!

[Libb @ Mar 31st 2008 7:23PM]

April Fools...

*Internet Psychic! Internet Psychic!*

Watch for a Pwnage release tomorrow, now that they WTFPWNZORD us.

And even if they don't, there will be some sort of Zibri dark knight type that will leak it anyway and make it their own development.

[Libb @ Mar 31st 2008 7:51PM]

And I hate replying to myself, but I just want to remind Engadget - iPhone Elite Team & iPhone Dev Team now = the same thing, they merged awhile ago (crazy scenesters and their petty Internet feuds...)

[NG @ Mar 31st 2008 7:23PM]

no wonder they delay that again and again...

(-_-) R.I.P. freed iphone

[Tony @ Mar 31st 2008 7:23PM]

yeah, i'm saying april fools. Although it IS kind of strange that that PWNED thing never got released....

[massive_98 @ Mar 31st 2008 7:24PM]

Ha Ha. Microsoft and Xbox for life suckers.

[rTwelve @ Mar 31st 2008 7:50PM]

ಠ_ಠ

[Chino B @ Mar 31st 2008 7:24PM]

Def April fools.

[alameda @ Mar 31st 2008 7:26PM]

It is April 1 in much of the world right now: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/custom.html?sort=2

[Doug @ Mar 31st 2008 7:28PM]

It's 4/1 in Russia right now...use your iphone world clock feature :)

[Iam9376 @ Mar 31st 2008 7:31PM]

And this is why Open Source is superior.

[retro77 @ Mar 31st 2008 7:34PM]

any wagers what the price was or who it was?

My guess: $500k, Apple.

[Nick @ Mar 31st 2008 7:39PM]

Several Things:

Seeing that the iphone devteam has proven loyal to their work, and to their community base, I find it extremely difficult to understand why people continue to doubt the validity of the pwnage tool.

Although this is too conveniently located near april's fools day, if it is a joke, it is indeed a cruel one.

In this situation, it seems best to take everything that they have said at face value.
However it does seem likely that apple and or at&t is the unnamed entity.

So my question is, is it possible that apple and at&t threatened the devteam and forced them into a situation in which they would have to say the things that have been said?

This iphone pwnage tool was beyond the thoughts of anyone a few days ago. They would have reached what would be known as the pinnacle of iphone hacking, as Dark Alex is revered for his work on the psp. It seems unlikely that a group that had spent so much time, energy, and thought would reach such a high point to give it up voluntarily.

[Christian A. Str?n @ Mar 31st 2008 7:44PM]

This is April Fools people.

[Marty K. @ Mar 31st 2008 7:44PM]

Its an April Fool's joke. Think about it. If the Dev Team wanted people to take this press release seriously, they would not have released it only hours away from April 1st.

But the Kyocera printer head that prints 1000 pages a minute, now that's real. ;)

[Robert @ Mar 31st 2008 7:54PM]

If this is real, what about those with the beta version of the Pwnage tool? They could accidently leak it right?

[sinai @ Mar 31st 2008 7:59PM]

as fast as people were willing to call them "sell outs" and talk about how easily they'll change their positions; if i were the dev team, i'd say "funk y'all" and take the money.

[Reader @ Mar 31st 2008 8:19PM]

But the pretense /was/ that they sold out and changed their positions...

[Drew Green @ Mar 31st 2008 8:03PM]

Isn't the point of an April Fool's Day prank to do it on April 1st, not March 31st?

[freakyterrorist @ Mar 31st 2008 8:08PM]

Stupid American
Its april 1 in over 1/2 the world by now

[Drew Green @ Mar 31st 2008 8:14PM]

I'm aware of that. However, I would assume that most of the iPhone dev team is American since they've been working on iPhone hacks since the device was first released, and it was only released in the US at first.

[Drew Green @ Mar 31st 2008 8:16PM]

Also, why the hell would you make your username "freaky terrorist"? That just seems very tasteless.

[mendo @ Mar 31st 2008 8:08PM]

It's an AF IMO. The source code of the page is:




Kind of a coincidence eh?
(I know there's a 4.01 HTML standard, but I don't buy it here :))

[Drew Green @ Mar 31st 2008 8:18PM]

Would you please explain what you mean by your post?

[mendo @ Mar 31st 2008 8:41PM]

damn, i left the tags as they are in the page and the text got deleted :)

!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"

So maybe, MAYBE, the 4.01 is more than a version, is a hint. That's what I meant :)

[cRaZyFaCKa @ Mar 31st 2008 8:15PM]

Don't know if this is April Fool's or not, but several things are certain:

Apple for sure has plenty of developers working on the iPhone security issues without success;
The Dev Team saying that it was pretty difficult for Apple to prevent this hack from working;
A bunch of worldwide hackers willing to take the Dev Team work (they know it's possible);

Now, do the maths =)

[ericthebikeman @ Mar 31st 2008 8:17PM]

I've long since come to the conclusion that April fools day is completely lame unless you are five. You know it's lame when the local news starts to pull pranks. Gee your ratings suck that bad that you need to pull childish pranks to seem hip or with it?

No, I'm not uptight, but April fools has no business in news...ever! I'm just happy I'm in classes for 13 hours this year so I'll miss most of the bullshit.

[Shola @ Mar 31st 2008 8:26PM]

In other lame April fools news, Revision 3 has been acquired by Fox