Hackers make progress toward unlocking iPhone
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(InfoWorld) - Efforts to unlock Apple's iPhoneÂ continued on Monday, with hackers claiming "very significant progress." The locked iPhone only works with AT&T's EDGE network, and cannot be used with cellular service from other providers. Locked phones are generally used to help operators recoup the cost of subsidizing handsets for their customers, but AT&T is not subsidizing the iPhone, which is priced at either $499 or $599, depending on the model. Instead, the phone is locked because AT&T has a five-year agreement with Apple to be the sole iPhone provider in the U.S. Unlocking the iPhoneÂ would be a boon for users locked into a contract with another U.S. carrier, or for users outside the U.S. who want an iPhone. While initial signs indicate an unlocked iPhone is possible, hackers must first overcome several challenges. One of those involves circumventing the authentication process in iTunes that both lets users register for an AT&T service plan and turn on the phone's features, including its camera and music player. By Monday evening, U.S. time, hackers had made headway towards circumventing the activation process. But the phone remained locked at the time of writing. "We have been fairly successful in spoofing iTunes activation processes. This should allow us to activate the phone," poster gj wrote on the iPhone Dev Wiki, one of several Web sites tracking efforts to unlock the phone. "It may in fact also prevent the SIM locking from occurring in the first place ... though we haven't verified this yet." These advances allowed hackers to set and read data on the iPhone, including the ability to query whether a phone has been activated. "The rest of our work is legwork really, in understanding how certain functions operate with the rest of the phone," the site said, adding hackers are close to the ability to browse system files on the iPhone, a key step toward unlocking the handset. Once the activation problem has been overcome, hackers will be faced with other questions. For instance, does iTunes have the ability to recognize a phone that was not activated for use with the AT&T network? If so, how will iTunes react? After these questions are resolved, hackers can focus on unlocking the handset itself. That task is made easier by the iPhone's use of a removable SIM (Subscriber Identity Module), a smart card that contains a user's phone number as well as storage space for contacts and messages, instead of one that was hardwired into the phone. The use of a removable SIM card means the iPhone is locked using its firmware, which can likely be cracked. While hackers race ahead to unlock the iPhone as quickly as possible, iPhone Dev Wiki poster gj criticized those hackers competing against each other to unlock the phone, saying the lack of cooperation had slowed progress. "I can't emphasize enough how much this s*** stinks. Trust me, your ego is not as important as you think it is. If everyone worked together we would have been done by now, but instead we have a******* all over the world trying to 'beat us to the punch,'" the poster wrote. Â
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Hackers have broken the chains that bind iPhone users to AT&amp;T. Will lawyers be the next ones on the line?
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A computer security firm said Monday that it found a way to hack into Apple&#39;s new iPhones, take command of the devices and steal stored information.
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Hackers and researchers pore over Apple's iPhone in an effort to discover vulnerabilities in the handsets.
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MENLO PARK, California  - A well-known hacker  claims to have overcome restrictions on Apple Inc.'s   iPhone, allowing highly technical users to bypass AT&T Inc.'s  network to use the phone's Internet and music features.
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Hackers who unlock Apple Inc.&#39;s iPhone from the AT&amp;T Inc. network and share the method with 10 million of their closest Internet friends are inviting a lawsuit from the two companies, several intellectual property lawyers said Monday.
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Intrusion prevention capabilities in IOS can be circumvented by hackers, putting companies at risk of attack.
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Video shows it working? A utility claimed to be the world's first software tool for unlocking the Apple iPhone was launched yesterday, even as hardware hackers said they'd figured out how to get the same result by tweaking the gadget itself.â¦
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Until the army of intrepid hackers succeeds in commandeering the gadget's command line, the fastest way to any iPhone user's heart is through the web browser.
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A video showing the founder of a Belfast, Northern Ireland company unlocking the iPhone hit the Web early Wednesday U.K. time as proof that software exists that can unlock Apple Inc.&#39;s device for use with carriers other than AT&amp;T Inc.
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A company that refurbishes cell phones is giving a car to a hacker that figured out how to unlock the iPhone.
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(InfoWorld) - A team of security experts in Baltimore said it has found a flaw inÂ Apple's iPhone handsetÂ that can be used by attackers to access private data stored on it. Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) said on a Web site dedicated to explaining the flaw and its exploitation that an attacker could gain access to the iPhone through a wireless access point, or through a Web site controlled by the attacker. Numerous hackers have beenÂ working to gain access to the iPhoneÂ in order to activate certain features or to allow it to be used on cellular networks other than AT&T's. However, this is the first major exploitation of an iPhone security flaw. Because the iPhone connects to wireless Internet access networks, such as Wi-Fi, by name, an attacker could create a network with the same name and encryption method as one the handset already uses. The attacker could then substitute a Web page with exploit code to gain access to the phone, ISE said on its Web site. An attacker could also use a link planted on an unedited or unmoderated online forum, or a link sent by SMS or e-mail to use make use of the flaw and gain access to the handset, ISE said. The company said its researchers had required two weeks of part-time work to find the flaw and exploit it. When the iPhone's Safari browser opens a malicious Web page, malicious code can be run on the phone via the flaw, allowing the attacker to read the iPhone's SMS log, address book, call history, and voice-mail information, which are also then sent to the attacker, ISE said. ISE said it would be presenting full details of the exploit and its procedure at the Black Hat 2007 conference in Las Vegas on August 2. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Three security researchers claimed Sunday that they have found the first exploitable vulnerability in Apple's iPhone, a flaw that allows them to steal any data from the device or even to turn it into a remote surveillance tool. The trio -- Charles Miller, formerly with the National Security Agency; Jake Honoroff; and Joshua Mason of Baltimore-based Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) -- have notified Apple of the vulnerability and given the company less than two weeks to fix the bug before Miller presents more information at the Black Hat conference on Aug. 2. According to a paper posted by the three, they rooted out a vulnerability in the iPhone's version of Safari using "fuzzing" tools and wrote a proof-of-concept exploit that can be delivered from a malicious Web site or using "man in the middle" tactics to trick users into connecting to a malicious wireless access point. Once the exploit runs, it's essentially game over, the researchers said: The iPhone is owned. "In our proof of concept, this code reads the log of SMS messages, the address book, the call history, and the voicemail data," the researchers wrote on the ISE site. "It then transmits all this information to the attacker." But wait -- there's more! That, however, could be just the beginning. The researchers claimed that a second exploit actually operated the iPhone remotely once the device was hijacked. "When we viewed a second HTML page in our iPhone, it ran the second exploit payload which forced [the iPhone] to make a system sound and vibrate for a second," they said in the paper. "Alternately, by using other API functions we discovered, the exploit could have dialed phone numbers, sent text messages, or recorded audio (as a bugging device) and transmitted it over the network for later collection by a malicious party." The vulnerability was reported to Apple last Tuesday, July 17. "We proposed a fix Apple could include in a future iPhone update," the researchers said, "but we don't know if they plan to do so. They responded and are looking into it." In an e-mail late Sunday night, Apple spokeswoman Lynn Fox would only say: "Apple takes security very seriously and has a great track record of addressing potential vulnerabilities before they can affect users. We're looking into the report submitted by I.S.E. and always welcome feedback on how to improve our security." She declined to answer questions about the Aug. 2 deadline, whether Apple would issue a patch before then, or what the company thought of the way the trio disclosed the vulnerability. Miller will provide more information on the vulnerability and exploit at the upcoming Black Hat 2007 security conference, which opens next Saturday, July 28, in Las Vegas. But is this the ethical way? ISE's president, Avi Rubin, defended the decision to announce the existence of the vulnerability prior to a patch being made available by Apple. "Why are we doing that? Well, I believe that there is a social responsibility to report it when a device is vulnerable to attackers," said Rubin on his own blog Sunday. "People buy these things and use them in ways that put their identity and their online accounts at risk, and by exposing these vulnerabilities, we can make users better judges of how to use their high-tech devices." Rubin is familiar to many security observers from his research into problems with electronic voting systems. The paper by Miller, Honoroff, and Mason also spelled out a number of weaknesses in the iPhone's security architecture, although it didn't specifically pin the vulnerability on any of those flaws. One, however, most likely contributed to the reach of the exploit. "There are serious problems with the design and implementation of security on the iPhone," the paper said. "The most glaring is that all processes of interest run with administrative privileges. This implies that a compromise of any application gives an attacker full access to the device." Other deficiencies the trio cited in the iPhone's operating system included not using address randomization -- a technique applied by Windows Vista that's designed to make it tougher for hackers to write reliable attack code -- and allowing code in the heap to execute. Those last two shortcomings have been criticized in the desktop version of Mac OS X for some time. Three months ago, during the fallout after a hacking contest that jacked a MacBook Pro notebook, HD Moore -- the vulnerability researcher noted for the Metasploit hacking and attack testing software -- took on the claim that Mac OS X is safer than Windows. "The Mac OS X platform is years behind Linux, Windows, and OpenBSD in terms of operating-system security," said Moore then. "All of the above platforms support some form of address randomization (ASLR) and include features that make exploitation slightly more difficult." The ISE researchers have also posted a short video of their hack in action on YouTube.
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Hackers could take control of an iPhone if its owner visits a doctored Web site or Internet hotspot, security researchers reported Monday.
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(InfoWorld) - What a world. We have to fight off viruses, zombies, bots, phishing, and on and on. Can you believe how many just plain evil people there are in the world? And what is their point? Simple thievery? To prove they are smarter than the rest of us? And think of all the money that's spent on defending, as best we can, against these miscreants or in cleaning up the mess when they get the better of us? Indeed, what a waste. While viruses have appeared on mobile devices, they are, thankfully, few and far between. Part of the reason for this has been a lack of standardization of software environments on handsets, and part is due to the minimal functionality that is typical on these products. It's hard for the socially challenged to overwrite boot sectors, corrupt data, or otherwise run amok on most cell phones today. Apple's decision to limit local software execution on the iPhone is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to a fundamental fear of hackers. While the Macintosh hasn't been much of a target for the hacker community, the iPhone could be a lot more tempting. There will be far more iPhones than Macs in the world in just a few years. Plus, Apple partner AT&T doesn't need the support headaches that come with having a large number of users jamming its 800 numbers with reports of bizarre symptoms on their iPhones. Regardless, being a Web services guy, I absolutely applaud Apple for moving the Web services art forward a notch or two with a very capable platform that might indeed replace PCs for many of us over the next decade or so. We don't need to run a lot of local code to have a meaningful IT experience while on the go. Of course, the iPhone will be hacked over time, requiring updates and fixes, just as is the case with the PC. There are already reports of hackers working diligently to unlock the phone so that non-AT&T SIM cards can be used, and to avoid cellular activation so that the device would be used only Wi-Fi networks -- with VoFi services, of course. Any programmable device runs this kind of risk, and defending against unauthorized code will remain a challenge for some time to come. Which brings me to a really obscure but very important, shall we say, "opportunity" for hackers. Last year, I wrote about one of the most exciting technology developments in wireless, software-defined radio (SDR). Basically, SDR simplifies radio hardware design by replacing specialized circuitry with software. Among the many benefits of SDR are over-the-air bug fixes, the ability to add new features on demand, and dynamic reprogrammability -- turning, for example, a GSM phone into a CDMA phone or even Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or UWB or whatever on the fly. With so much software at play here, the question has to be asked: Could an SDR get hacked? Suppose someone figures out how to build a virus that quickly spreads to SDR-based handsets, disabling them or using them as jammers or worse? What if those handsets are being used for public-safety applications? This is not to say that hacking is the only vector for wireless disruptions. After all, anyone can use a jammer to disable communications in a local area, and any moron with a reasonable shortwave transmitter can pretend to be an air traffic controller. That fact that we still use an unencrypted, unauthenticated communications protocol for such a critical service boggles my mind. The FCC is rightfully concerned about SDR hacking and has issued new regulations for SDRs that mostly attempt to deal with open source software in SDR applications. There is significant concern that open source software creates specific vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit. I don't think this is very likely for two reasons. First, open source isn't the same as open architectures. Each product vendor would of necessity keep certain elements of their implementation secret, locking out all but the most determined hackers. But secondly, and more importantly, the real issue is how to protect individual phones from ever loading harmful software. We already have pretty good techniques for this from the PC world, and there are many effective approaches to solving this particular security concern. It could even be argued that the technical scrutiny that comes with open source actually enhances security and integrity; the real issue is controlling what software, open source or not, gets onto the mobile device. As I noted in my last column, the big issue with SDR isn't hackers or security: It is the need to lower the power demands of SDR implementations so that they have a prayer of running on batteries. The road to SDR-based handsets isn't at all paved yet, but open source is a relatively minor concern.
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Gets firm with firmware A teen hacker known for his deftness with iPhones has figured out how to unlock models running the latest firmware versions by cracking a protection that that has frustrated hackers for weeks.â¦
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After Apple warned iPhone users yesterday that the next software update could break their phones, the group behind one of the unlocking projects says they'll have a fix next week.