DVD Jon Says He Can Bypass AT&T on iPhone
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A well-known hacker claims to have overcome AT&T's restrictions on the iPhone, but the hacked phone cannot make calls.
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A member of iPhoneSimFree, another group that claims to have unlocked the iPhone, answers some questions.
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A new software-based unlocking scheme for your iPhone makes it easier for those of us without soldering skills to leave AT&T. But the good times probably won't last.
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(InfoWorld) - Users are reporting that a new update to Apple's iPhone is making previously unlocked iPhones unusable. The iPhone 1.1.1 update , released Thursday, breaks phones that have been hacked so that they work with providers other than AT&T, the only U.S. provider Apple has allowed to carry its mobile phones. In recent months, a number of software tools have been developed whichÂ allow iPhone users to break free of Apple's AT&T-only restriction, but Apple has said that it would fight any attempts to unlock the iPhone. Earlier this week the company released a warning that unlocked iPhones "will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed." Shortly after the Thursday update was released, users of unlocked iPhones began reporting problems. Security researcher Tom Ferris said the new software disabled a phone that had been unlocked using the open-source anySIM software in order to work on T-Mobile's wireless network. After the update, the iPhone was stuck with an error message and apparently unusable. "It kept saying 'unsupported SIM card,' even with the AT&T SIM card in it," he said. "You can turn the phone off or on, but we just can't figure out how to get past this 'SIM card not supported'," he said. SIM cards contain account information and are used to authenticate devices on certain types of mobile networks. Unlocked iPhones can use SIM cards from non-AT&T networks. Others were reporting similar problems on Thursday. The update also appears to disable the 'Jailbreak' hack which allows users to install unsupported software on the iPhone, Ferris said. After the 1.1.1 patch was installed, it wiped out all of the third-party applications he had installed on a second iPhone, he said. The new software is Apple's biggest iPhone update to date, andÂ it fixes a number of security flaws in the iPhone's browser, mail client, and Bluetooth networking server. The majority of the flaws do not appear to be critical, but the update fixes a larger number of bugs than the first iPhone update, released July 31. Hackers have said that the iPhone's browser and mail clients are the most likely sources of software flaws and this release bears that out. Apple fixed seven flaws in the Safari browser, two in the iPhone's mail client, and one Bluetooth bug with the release. The Bluetooth flaw could be the most serious -- Apple said that it could allow an attacker to run unauthorized code on the iPhone -- but because Bluetooth works over a range of just a few feet, the attacker would have to be standing near the victim for any exploit to work, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with nCircle Network Security. Noted hacker HD Moore agreed that the Bluetooth flaw was serious. "The only bad issue here is the Bluetooth [flaw]," he said. "I will start working on this tonight." Though there may be some technical limitations to what an attacker could do by exploiting this bug, it "could be a nasty remote exploit," he added. Earlier this week,Â Moore added iPhone hacking capabilities to the Metasploit hacking toolÂ that he develops. The patch also fixes some cross-site scripting and JavaScript flaws in the browser that could also be serious, Storms said. These flaws could be exploited to make the browser run unauthorized JavaScript code, he said. Mobile phone users typically cannot update their own software, but Apple introduced this capability in the iPhone, which uses the update mechanism in the phone's iTunes music player. iTunes checks for these updates once per week, so it may take up to seven days for all iPhone users to see these updates. Apple advises users to install the update immediately.
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Hackers asked to restore iEunuch's dignity Comment Within hours of last week's iPhone debut, hackers were dissecting it. Their goal: unlock capabilities Apple preferred customers not have. As a result, it's now possible to activate the device without entering into a two-year contract, and it's only a matter of time until you can run third-party apps.â¦
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Blog: Rumors emerge that the iPhone will be avaialble to prepaid AT&T users.
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A group of hackers said they will soon sell software allowing Apple&#39;s iPhone to be used with any cellphone carrier, skirting AT&amp;T&#39;s exclusive deal in the United States.
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A grainy video made in Northern Ireland has been posted on the Web showing the iPhone being unlocked and being used to make calls with a carrier other than AT&T.
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(InfoWorld) - A hacker who figured out how to unlock the iPhone has traded an unlocked phone for a new car. After facing problems trying to auction the phone on eBay, George Hotz received a call from CertiCell, a company that refurbishes mobile phones. "Terry Daidone, the founder of CertiCell, contacted me this morning, and offered to make a trade for the iPhone," Hotz wrote on his blog. "I traded it for a sweet Nissan 350Z and 3 8GB iPhones." Hotz shared the method he discovered for unlocking the phone on his blog, so the phone he traded doesn't hold any secrets. But he put the phone up for auction because he thought someone might want the phone, the second one that he unlocked, for its historical value. "If you are only bidding on this to get an unlocked iPhone, don't. There are much cheaper and easier ways to get one. This is a piece of cell phone history," he wrote on his blog. Hotz, who arrived at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York for his first days of college on Sunday, closed the eBay auction after receiving too many fraudulent bids. He then invited legitimately interested buyers to contact him directly. He plans to give the three iPhones from CertiCell to people who helped him as he worked on unlocking the phone. Besides accepting the gifts, Hotz agreed to do some consulting work for CertiCell, according to a statement from the company. While the statement says that CertiCell doesn't plan to commercialize Hotz's unlocking method, it also says that part of Hotz's consulting work will include training CertiCell staff on the unlocking process. CertiCell also hopes that Hotz will help its engineers develop new methods for updating software and reflashing refurbished phones. Since the iPhone went on sale at the end of June,Â hackers have been working on ways to unlock it. The phones are built to work only on AT&T's wireless network. Unlocking the phone means that a customer can use it on another network and avoid signing a long contract with AT&T. The process is controversial, however. One company, Uniquephones, says that it has developed a way to unlock the phones, but hasÂ delayed the release because of concerns of legal action from AT&T.
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A well-known hacker  claims to have overcome restrictions on Apple Inc.&#39;s iPhone,  allowing highly technical users to bypass AT&T Inc.&#39;s network  to use the phone&#39;s Internet and music features.
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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.'s device for use with carriers other than AT&amp;T Inc.
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Blog: Buying an iPhone was the easy part. After nine hours, AT&T has yet to activate my iPhone, and it can't be used even for playing music or movies until that happens.
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Although iPhoneSIMFree announced last week that it had devised a software unlock that would allow iPhones to work on networks other than AT&T, it only plans to sell the solution to resellers -- not individual iPhone owners.
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A start-up co-founded by famed  Norwegian hacker "DVD Jon" is on Tuesday introducing a service  that enables users to copy and use copy-protected Apple  Inc iTunes songs on many popular non-Apple devices.
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Want an iPhone but don't want to use AT&T?  A UK company says it soon will offer a service to help owners unlock their iPhones for use with other cellular operators.
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(InfoWorld) - A hacker group released a free, open source unlock for Apple's iPhone late Tuesday, just a day after a commercial company started selling something similar for as much as $99 through a network of online resellers. The iPhone Dev Team, a dozen programmers who began their attempts to break the iPhone's reliance on AT&T in early July, have posted their hack on download servers. According to several sites, including Gizmodo and Engadget, the iPhone Dev Team unlock exploits the same iPhone bug as the for-money iPhoneSIMFree hack to do its magic. The two groups, however, came up with their solutions independently. But the process isn't for the faint of heart. "This unlock is not for everybody!" the iPhone Dev Team warned. The procedure involves several separate programs -- some of which must be obtained elsewhere on the Internet -- and requires that iPhone owners execute commands from a shell screen on the Mac or PC. Even so, reports have been posted to the team's site from users in more than 40 countries that the unlock hack works, and after a swap of the iPhone's included SIM card with one from another cellular service provider, that they've been able to access more than 90 different carriers. The iPhone's distinctive Visual Voicemail, which lets users select voice-mail messages rather than listen to them in the order they were received, is missing after an unlock; that feature relies on AT&T's back end. Some users have also reported that the iPhone's connection to YouTube no longer works after the hack is applied. The iPhone Dev Team is already working on a one-click tool sporting a graphical interface that will unlock an iPhone, but it had not been released as of this morning. "A new version of the GUI tool is almost complete," the group said on its site. It's likely, however, that any unlock will be undone by the next iPhone update, which Apple has said will be issued sometime this month to give the device new capabilities, such as Wi-Fi downloading from iTunes. The iPhoneSIMFree group, for example, has hammered the caveat into potential buyers' heads: "We cannot offer any guarantee should Apple Inc. choose to re-lock the phone after a future update," it stated in a FAQ. Resellers of the iPhoneSIMFree hack, who have priced the unlock as low as $45, have repeated the no-guarantee mantra. Apple has repeatedly refused to comment on the various iPhone unlock hacks -- paid versions or free ones.
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Hackers have figured out how to unleash Apple's iPhone from AT&amp;T's cellular network, but people hoping to make money from the procedure could face legal problems.