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iPhone Dev Team says Pwnage Tool won't unlock iPhone 3G (for now)
iPhone unlocking is a little more cash-intensive now that Apple and AT&T are all contract-happy with the 3G, but it looks like would-be unlockers will have a little more time to save up those pennies -- the erstwhile hackers on the iPhone Dev Team say that while a forthcoming version of the sadly-named Pwnage tool will activate and jailbreak the iPhone 3G, unlocking is taking a little longer than expected, and they don't want to release the code until it's exactly right. The tool still unlocks first-gen iPhones running 2.0 and allows jailbreak apps to co-exist with the App Store, so if you're desperate to unlock right away, we'd say a first-gen unit is your best bet.
Dev Team shows off video of 'world's first' jailbroken iPhone 3G
We can't say this is a surprise... but it is sweet to see. The iPhone Dev Team has added a video to their blog showing off the latest version of their upcoming PwnageTool 2.0, along with a video of what they claim is the "world's first" jailbroken iPhone 3G. Check the video after the break, and hit the read link to see how their progress is coming on the new case-cracker.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Found Footage: Dev Team Posts Video
If you've been thinking the iPhone Dev Team (the team behind the jailbreaking applications) would die out after firmware 2.0, then think again. That's because the dev team has just published a video showing the jailbreaking process for a 2.0 iPhone.Update: We are currently uploading the video, in the mean time you can view the video on the iPhone Dev's website.
iPhone Dev Team officially Pwns firmware 2.0 on video
You saw this coming right? With barely even 24 hours of 2.0 in our life, the Dev Team has once again cracked the case wide open. They've got a video of all the action -- featuring the upcoming PwnageTool 2.0 -- that just went live on their site, so hit the read link and check it out for yourself... you won't be disappointed.Update: It's looking like the video isn't functioning right now -- we're looking for a mirror and will let you know when we find it.Update 2: Video is up after the break! Just do it.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Video: The iPhone Dev Team's Pwnage tool in action
Although the iPhone Dev Team totally punked us on April Fool's Day, they were still nice enough to give us an early hands-on (in person!) with a pre-release version of their new Pwnage tool. Pwnage lets you load in any firmware you want, including patched firmwares not signed by Apple -- which could lead to everything from custom software distributions to totally new OSs ported over (like, say, Android or Linux). We did what most people are probably going to do, however: we took a brand new 8GB iPhone, unlocked it, and upgraded to the 2.0 firmware, while keeping it active on T-Mobile. It's not exactly a one-click process, but it's not all that hard either -- although we kind of cheated and had Dev Team members talking us through it. Peep the vid after the break, and check the read links in few hours to get your hands on Windows and Mac versions of the tool.P.S. -Apologies for the blurry video for the first couple minutes, we didn't notice that our camera had gotten knocked out of macro mode. You're not missing much, trust us. Oh, and the only cuts are during loading bars and when we accidentally flashed a phone number and the iPhone's serial number -- we figured you didn't really want 20 minutes of listening to people sniffle during progress bars.Read - iphone-dev.org (Pwnage tool creators)Read - The iPhone Project (hosting the Pwnage tool)
Video of the iPhone Pwned project in action
Those crafty kids on the iPhone Dev Team have already hacked the 2.0 firmware, but now they're getting ready to release the oh-so-creatively-named PWNED tool, which takes iPhone hacking to the next level by patching the bootloader to let you load any firmware image you want -- even images not signed by Apple. That means custom patched firmware can now be loaded directly from iTunes, which simplifies the jailbreaking / unlocking process tremendously, and also means that a patched version of the 2.0 firmware is coming soon. We're putting the tool through its paces right now and we'll have a hands-on with it (and the Dev Team's patched 2.0 firmware) as soon as we get it all working, but check out some highlights after the break, and hit the read link for more info.Update: Looks like PWNED / Pwned Tool / Pwnage Tool / Pwnage / whatever they're calling it is being delayed for a week. Bummer. Thanks, Neophytos.
TUAW Responds: iPhone LoJack
Way back, one of our readers begged for an iPhone LoJack solution. He wanted his iPhone to "call home" regularly in case of loss or, let's be more realistic, theft. Over the past week, I finally had a chance to give this request some time, and I put together findme. It's a command-line program that returns the location of the cell phone tower nearest to your iPhone. When run, it tells you the tower id, plus its latitude and longitude courtesy of Google Maps. Still, how to get the location report to a place you can get it... but nobody else can... and without receiving a zillion SMSes? For this part of the puzzle, enter Twitter. Twitter dev Britt Selvitelle helped walk me through the setup for a private account that allows your iPhone to phone home but keeps the location data relatively secure. To do this, create a new Twitter account just for your iPhone (it will need its own unique email address, separate from your main account, so have one handy). Open the Settings panel, and look for the "Protect My Updates" checkbox. It's towards the bottom of the page, just above the Save button. Check this and click Save. With protected updates, only the Twitter users you approve will see the updates for this iPhone-only account (just you? you + spouse? spouse, kids, and "special friends?" Up to you).Update: I've put an updated version of findme (findme-better) into the TUAW folder on my site. Please let me know if this works better for location for you. To use, just copy to your iPhone (you may have to use Firefox if you get errors after downloading with Safari), rename to "findme" and replace the original findme.
iPhone Dev Team releases code for the AnySim unlock tool
The iPhone Dev Team has been calling their AnySim iPhone unlock tool "open source" from the start, but they've finally made good on their promise and posted the code on Google Code. Have at it, hackers -- not being able to unlock new 1.1.2 iPhones is surely putting a damper on someone's holiday season.
iPhone dev team releases free 1.1.1 unlock
The industrious rebels of the iPhone Dev Team have joined in the iPhone unlock chess match today, with the release of AnySim 1.1, a free unlocking app that enables iPhones with both firmware version 1.02 and 1.1.1 to operate on any GSM network. The hack only works with "virgin" iPhones right now, and unlocking a 1.0.2 phone and updating to 1.1.1 will result in a bricked device, but the team says they'll be releasing a "revirginizer" for locked 1.1.1 phones soon. As always, hack at your own risk -- and don't expect future updates to go smoothly.[Via TUAW]
iPhone Dev Team releases iPhone 1.1.1 Jailbreak with a side of wolf-nipple chips
Hot on the heels of the TIFF exploit released by a splitter group of iPhone/touch hackers, comes the announcement of a 1.1.1 jailbreak from the original front dubbed the iPhone Dev Team. The hack provides jailbreak, activation, and third party apps but only applies to the iPhone and is not meant for iPhones with modified basebands. Just remember, the risk is all yours if decide to rework the holy wares of the Cupertino Messiah. Thing is, if future Apple firmware updates don't stop you, then the increasingly complex and confusing hacking scene most certainly will.[Via iPhone Atlas]
First signs of a schism in the iPhone dev community
One of the challenges of ad-hoc open source development is that, sooner or later, disagreements arise. Personality conflicts generate friction (often exacerbated by the limits of online communication, and cultural or linguistic differences). Optimal technical solutions may be obscured by the rising heat of names called and accusations leveled.This tension was bound to hit the iPhone developer community, and it seems like the time is now. The iPhone Dev Team, by most accounts an informal collection of hackers run pretty much on a meritocracy basis, is now being called on the carpet by a splinter group calling itself the iPhone "Elite" Team. The cause of the split is both technical and personal: personal, a hacker called Zibri was banned from the IDT irc channel; technical, the "Elite" Team is claiming on its Google Code wiki that the iUnlock and AnySIM unlocking utilities contained critical errors that led directly to the 1.1.1-related iPhone bricking problems.We know that the combination of the unlocking utilities and the 1.1.1 firmware has been a poison pill for iPhones; however, with the substantial population of never-hacked, never-unlocked phones that have also suffered iBrickage, we can't exclude the likelihood that there are some dangerous bugs lurking in the firmware upgrade itself. It would be nice if all the clever folk who have taken the time to explore the iPhone's inner workings could cooperate in the spirit of harmony and mutual support... but even in a world with something as cool as the iPhone, maybe it's too much to ask that everyone get along all the time.
"iPhone Dev Team" issues statement
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/iPhone_dev_team_disputes_Apple_FUD_with_bold_statement_about_unlocking'; A spokesman for the iPhone Dev Team, the group that developed the iPhone unlock has issued a statement condemning Apple and promising a tool in the next week which will restore your iPhone to a factory-fresh state. The unlock, he writes, made the iPhone free and useful world-wide, not just in certain countries. The text of the statement, with modifications for grammar and spelling, follows after the break.
The story behind iUnlock: the first free, open iPhone SIM unlock software
If you're like us, you're furiously unlocking every iPhone in sight at the moment, but what you might not know is the story behind the hack. It all started Monday when iPhoneSIMfree was finally released. Hackers immediately bought up licenses and started looking into how the thing ticked, and found something rather surprising: the app flashes to the baseband chip -- something the iPhone Dev Team had originally said couldn't be done at all without hardware hackery, diverting effort away from such attempts.But instead of just swiping the iPhone Dev Team's method, hackers started looking for different ways to achieve the same results now they knew a baseband flash could be done, and a certain Zappaz finally struck gold after working on it all Monday night and well into Tuesday. But that was only the beginning. [Updated after the break]
Developing: iPhone Dev Team one step away from free unlock?
Now that iPhoneSIMfree is in the wild, the iPhone Dev Team folks that started all this hackery have been looking to see how the iPhoneSIMfree hack works, and seem to have landed upon the solution. Apparently the thrust of what the iPhoneSIMfree folks figured out was that it's possible to write / flash to the baseband of the iPhone -- the chip that controls the main voice and system functions of the phone. Apparently Geohot resorted to his hardware hack because it was believed this couldn't be done. Now that the Dev Team people have observed this flashing in action, they've launched into writing their very own unlocker using the same method, which will naturally be released free of charge as soon as it's ready. All signs point to the free, standalone unlocker being ready soon. On a slightly shadier note, there seems to be a parallel effort to emulate the iPhoneSIMfree server that does the unlocking magic for those currently willing to pay for the privilege. If it's to be believed, the fake server (and free network unlocking) should be ready to go in a matter of hours.Update 1: The iPhoneSIMfreefree folks have apparently tracked down a willing iPhoneSIMfree licensee to test out the new methods, so it seems we're certainly getting closer to the server spoof method being ready to go.6:27PM EDT: Turns out that license they thought they'd scored fell through, so they're still on the hunt for a working one to get the server spoof up and running. No real word yet on the standalone software from the Dev Team.6:35PM EDT: On the standalone front, word is "they are in the process of compiling tools that will make a software unlock possible."7:32PM EDT: Purportedly the Dev Team has their new standalone unlock working and are making calls with a new SIM. At this point the code still needs a lot of cleanup -- the unlock takes 20 minutes, much longer than iPhoneSIMfree -- and certainly isn't ready for end users yet, but it does appear to be working according to those in the know.
iPhone Dev Team one step away from free unlock?
Now that iPhoneSIMfree is in the wild, the iPhone Dev Team folks that started all this hackery have been looking to see how the iPhoneSIMfree hack works, and seem to have landed upon the solution. Apparently the thrust of what the iPhoneSIMfree folks figured out was that it's possible to write / flash to the baseband of the iPhone -- the chip that controls the main voice and system functions of the phone. Apparently Geohot resorted to his hardware hack because it was believed this couldn't be done. Now that the Dev Team people have observed this flashing in action, they've launched into writing their very own unlocker using the same method, which will naturally be released free of charge as soon as it's ready. All signs point to the free unlocker being ready soon. On a slightly shadier note, there seems to be a parallel effort to emulate the iPhoneSIMfree server that does the unlocking magic for those currently willing to pay for the privilege. If it's to be believed, the fake server (and free service) should be ready to go in a matter of hours.
