CrunchGear » Search Results » jailbreak

EBay Deal Alert! 4,000 iPhones stolen from Belgian electronics store

John Biggs — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:30:33 +0000

Thieves in Willebroek, Antwerp cut a hole in the roof of an electronics warehouse and stole 3,000 to 4,000 iPhones, one of the greatest heists of its kind in history. The phones were headed to Belgian Mobistar and are estimated to be worth $3 million.

The news article noted that the thieves made a hole directly over the iPhones which suggests they knew exactly where the phones were being kept.

The phones can be feasibly tracked and can only be activated through jailbreaking, which could put a damper on their online sales. Also, this comment was funny:

Haha, geen medelijden mee. Mobistar is zelf een dief als het op abonementen aankomt.

Which roughly translates to “Don’t pity them. Mobistar is the thief when it comes to subscriptions.”

via Fortune

Modders hard at work circumventing Xbox banning

Dave Freeman — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:00:04 +0000

Were you one of the 1 million Xbox live users that got banned yesterday? Well, you might not want to go buy that new Xbox quite yet. Some of the modders (you know, the ones who got you banned in the first place) are working on a solution that returns the firmware to an almost stock configuration, which would allow you to actually use your console again.

Much like the jailbreakers, the Xbox modders are nothing if not persistent. Yesterday, Microsoft went after the estimated 1 million Xbox owners that had tampered with their systems. The ban locked out the installation of games on the hard drive, stopped Windows Media Player from working, wrecked the gamertags stored on the Xboxen in question, and blocked the consoles from logging in to Xbox Live.

There are two fixes currently being worked on, one from iXtreme LT, which isn’t ready yet, and one from Xbox-Scene which works, but is extremely complex. And you need to know your CPU key, which can be difficult to obtain, particularly if you’re already banned.

[via Daily Tech]

Help Key: How to unlock your iPhone 3GS with Geohot’s new BlackSn0w app

John Biggs — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:42:02 +0000

BlackSn00000w is coming down, on me… Geohot, creator of the original iPhone unlock, has crack the 05.11.07 baseband to enable tethering, jailbreak for 3.1.2, and complete SIM unlock of the 3GS. This means you can use your iPhone on any GSM network.

To unlock:
1. First jailbreak your phone with BlackRa1n and then run the BlackRa1n app on the iPhone.

2. Later today you’ll see blacksn0w (it will appear in the BlackRa1n app). This app will unlock the phone completely.
3. Profit!

The jailbreak works under Windows and OS X. The unlock only works for 3GS models.

via iClarified

And the winner of the HP Envy 13 is….

Matt Burns — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:00:22 +0000

Before I reveal the winner of the HP Envy 13, let’s go over the contest one last time. We hid seven words in seven posts over the last seven days. To be entered into the contest, you had to find all seven words, paste them into an email and send it to us before midnight last night. The first word, PACKARD, was in the initial contest post. It was then followed up by AUTOMOBILES, RENDERED, FORDS, OBSOLETE, TURF, and then finally yesterday, WARFARE. Out of the 1,300 correct entries, we randomly picked one winner and that person is…

…Marie T. from Maryland! Won’t you all join me in congratulating our winner!

No? You’re going to be like that, eh? Fine. I see how you are. You didn’t win a $1700 notebook and now you’re going to be a jerk about it. Well, I’m glad you didn’t win then. Marie would have probably congratulated you. She sounds like a very nice person so be happy for her. Maybe you’ll win something else in the future.

Blackra1n iPhone 3GS/iPod Touch jailbreak now available for Mac

Greg Kumparak — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:25:09 +0000

Just days ago, iPhone hacker extraordinaire geohot released blackra1n, a tool for jailbreaking the iPod Touches and iPhones (including the 3GS) running OS 3.1.2. Alas, it was only available for Windows users. Just two days later, geohot and the rest of the endlessly impressive iPhone hacking community have it all up and running on OS X.

Don’t want to pay $10,000 to have an iTunes LP version of your album? Make your own

Devin Coldewey — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:40:03 +0000

Update: Apparently, the original guy was in error. Somehow he was informed that there’s a $10k fee while Apple is saying there is not. They say: “There is no production fee charged by Apple. We’re releasing the open specs for iTunes LP soon, allowing both major and indie labels to create their own.” I just don’t know what to believe any more.

The whole world was bullish on iTunes LPs when they were announced; I called it a black eye for the majors, whose CMX format has yet to be popularized. But the hype was curbed when it was discovered that there was a $10,000 fee associated with the service, putting it completely out of reach for less affluent artists and small labels who can’t afford that price for promotion.

Luckily for them, Apple was nice enough to make the format rather basic. It turns out anyone versed in a little HTML and Javascript can put together an LP that’s just as good as a “real” one. It’s not as simple as drag-and-drop, and without Apple’s proprietary TuneKit library, some functionality is difficult or impossible to replicate at this point. But iTunesLP.net is trying to collect all the information you need into a few tutorials and demo files.

The site seems kind of hammered now, but I can see from what I’ve read there that really, a day’s work or less is all it would take to put together a serious ITLP. They’ve already released one: Disney’s 1957 Fantasia record, complete with high-quality art and program. Of course, you’ll need to get the album yourself, but if a record was ever deserving of the ITLP treatment, Fantasia is.

At this rate, it won’t be long before music promoters and designers will put “iTunes LP production” on their list of capabilities. The legality of this will be debated, but the demand is such that, like jailbreaking your iPhone, it’ll catch on with Apple’s blessing or not.

The question is, will Apple take positive measures to lock out third party ITLP files? That would be a spiteful move and a fiercely unpopular one, but the RIAA and other media giants have a history of spiteful and unwise actions (in fact, they make them almost exclusively) and Apple might follow in their shoes. The $10,000 fee is proof of that.

One may hope, though without too much expectation, that Apple will open it up and give out an affordable toolset for putting ITLPs together. Perhaps this fee business is just to stick it to the early adopters in big media, and then they’ll rain down love and compassion and SDKs on the faithful. But I doubt it.

[via Hack a Day]

Jailbreak everything (well, only iPhone 3.1.2 firmware) with blackra1n

John Biggs — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:46:12 +0000

If you’ve been waiting to upgrade, now you’re ready to rock. A new app, blackra1n, will jailbreak any 3.1.2 iPhone or iPod Touch.

Interestingly, this is a Windows-only release (download it here), just like his previous opus, purplera1n). Also N.B this jailbreak will break your unlocked iPhone so be wary.

So, what is blackra1n? blackra1n is a 30 second ALL device 3.1.2 jailbreak. Even the ipt3, but the ipt3 is tethered. In order to boot it, just rerun blackra1n. As far as donations go, they are much appreciated, but not until after blackra1n works for you. I never ask for donations before the tool is released.

Warning 3g and 3gs unlockers, do not upgrade to 3.1.2 using iTunes if you want to keep your unlock. Baseband cannot be downgraded. Check out the dev team’s offerings. Also blackra1n doesn’t hacktivate.

Also, the secret word for today is FORDS. Just thought you might like to know.

EyeWriter: low-cost, open-source eye-based drawing system

Devin Coldewey — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:30:52 +0000

Created as a tool for people suffering from full paralysis, this system is a pretty amazing piece of work. Its called the EyeWriter, and the project is led by a group of graffiti artists driven to help one of their own, Tony Quan, who is afflicted with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. I love this sort of grassroots innovation — and I wonder what they might get done if they had a lab and a NIS grant.

I can’t do the project justice here; it’s described in detail at FAT’s site. Give it a look.

[via The Jailbreak, NotCot, and Gizmodo]

Ultimate iPhone App Organizer Hits The Web

Daniel Brusilovsky — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:28:53 +0000

Have you ever wanted to rearrange your applications on your iPhone, but ended up messing up pages of apps? Well, now there is a solution for that, and it’s called Movement. Movement essentially lets your rearrange all of your applications on your iPhone or iPod Touch, straight from your Mac. Seems too good to be true, right? Of course, there’s a catch. It requires a jailbroken iPhone.

MG Siegler wrote about iTunes 9 a few weeks ago on TechCrunch, with the possibility of app organization, but it’s all up in the air right now.

Overall, Movement is very cool. It provides a tool that many iPhone and iPod Touch users want, but under a cost of jailbreaking your iPhone or iPod Touch. Movement is developed by indie Mac developer Jeff Stieler.

(Thanks to Zain Memon for the screenshots)

CrunchBase Information

Apple

iPhone 3G

Information provided by CrunchBase

Installing the Whitoken theme on your iPod Touch

John Biggs — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:14:20 +0000

It seems like only yesterday that we were slobbering over the Whitoken theme for the iPod Touch. Well, today you can install this amazing theme with a little muss and fuss. The first step is to jailbreak your iPod with redsn0w and install Cydia, the app installer, and theme manager Winterboard. QuickPWN will take up the slack for you, showing you all the steps necessary to make your iPod look like the controller on the Axiom.

IThe biggest issue with this theme is that it requires quite a bit of set-up. Each app has to be stuck into a mini folder using a program called Categories and then creating a bunch of weird blank icons that do nothing but keep some icons away from others. However if you’ve got a few hours to kill this weekend – Hurricane Bill is hitting the East Coast so maybe you’ll have a nice day in – you can give it a try. Send us screenshots when you figure it out.

Legalize it! We designed a t-shirt about jailbreaking your iPhone, and it’s great

Nicholas Deleon — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:35:06 +0000

We discuss a lot of wacky ideas in the CrunchGear chat room every single day. Most of the time, though, these ideas come to nothing and we just get on with being mildly informative. Not today! Presenting, um, a t-shirt we designed! It’s on CafePress, because that’s all we know how to use.

We here know that the jailbreaking movement is alive and well, and that many of you are avid supporters of the whole movement… how else to install GV Mobile on your iPhone? This shirt, featuring the famous “pineapple escaping” logo from one of those jailbreaking apps, is something we whipped up in the chat room last week. (There’s a lot of idle nonsense in the chat room, as you might expect.) And if this goes well, maybe we’ll look into putting some of our other ideas to paper or cotton or whatever.

P2P “jeopardizes national security,” jailbreaking “desirable to drug dealers”

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:30:52 +0000

Claims of the day
Oh dear. Apple and the Federal Government have both lost all connection with reality. I mean, it’s not like there was much to begin with, but this is like a policy debate Godwin. It seems that the activities you and I think of as simply illegal and/or unwanted (jailbreaking and P2P software), are a clear and present danger to this country and everyone in it.

The chairman of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform says (of Limewire, though his phrasing suggests a wider application):

At any time your computer is connected to the Internet, other computer users with similar software could simply search your hard drive and copy unprotected files.

It’s also true that if you leave your door unlocked, people might walk in and take things. That’s actually a growing problem here in Seattle. But you don’t hear anyone saying we should ban doors.

In a similar but unrelated incident we posted (I wanted to get my two cents in), it was revealed that Apple has more than simple greed in mind when it argues against jailbreaking. It’s not just that you’ll use free voice apps. It says that with a jailbroken phone,

…a local or international hacker could potentially initiate commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data. Taking control of the BBP software would be much the equivalent of getting inside the firewall of a corporate computer — to potentially catastrophic result.

Well, it’s much easier to do things like that with a computer. And they come jailbroken. And just as a parting shot, they suggest that a jailbroken phone allows the user to mess with the phone’s Exclusive ID number, allowing it to make calls anonymously. Cue Apple:

This would be desirable to drug dealers

Yes, anonymous calls, not unlike those made from pay phones. This garbage is the biggest load of FUD I’ve seen in a long time. I’m not advocating for the right to hack cell towers, but the arguments being given against jailbreaking and P2P are like saying “the hammer is a potential murder weapon. Therefore we must ban hammers.” Screw that. The more they take these illegitimate stances, the more people will wonder what they’re trying so hard to hide that isn’t drug-dealing, tower-hacking, vital-national-security-comprimising bullshit.

[image credit: Mercer Mayer in his scariest book]

iPhone security “broken” – business users take note

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:45:30 +0000

An Apple expert and hacker has shown that the iPhone, in all its various forms and moltings, is child’s play to compromise. This comes despite assurances from Apple regarding the 3GS’s encryption feature. Bad news for businesspeople of the 21st century, who have glommed onto the iPhone and its service halo like no other device. The wonder-phone has certainly changed the way smartphones and other devices are made, but this isn’t the first time Apple’s security measures have been described as being seriously lacking.

It seems that with a little creative coding, or access to an insecure computer, the iPhone can be cracked wide open. The encryption doesn’t really even enter into the equation, since you can just have the phone read off the information you want. There hasn’t been much of a reason to hack iPhones yet — you might get a few Facebook passwords, or some contact info, but now that the phone is gaining traction in the business world, there may actually be something worth stealing on them. And it’s not very hard to do. I like this quote: “I don’t think any of us have ever seen encryption implemented so poorly before.”

The vulnerability lies… well, I can’t tell you exactly. “A little bit of free software” is what Jonathan Zdziarski used in a demonstration for Wired, and I assume it’s not being described exactly for the same reason you don’t print the components of napalm in the Sunday paper. Regardless, it’s a quick and easy process (involving jailbreaking and installing a SSH client) once you know how to do it, with specific data available in just a few minutes and a full disk image in under an hour. If a large business has deployed thousands of iPhones as their official device (which is certainly happening), you can bet there are trade secrets and company files on there somewhere.

Whether the risk is worth the convenience of an all-iPhone business network is up to you. But if I had my powerpoints and investors’ balance sheets on a device proven to have a, shall we say, porous perimeter, I’d reassess — not that I’d ever keep my critical information on any current phone, with the possible exception of the President’s. Personally, I’ll stick with Sneakernet 1.0 for my highly secure data mobilization needs.

Apple’s unprecedented success with the iPhone has increased their liability and their vulnerable surface area. Zdziarski isn’t a black hat, so I’m sure he’s talked with Apple about this, but the fact that he’s going public with a serious security issue just days after the earnings call that launched a thousand posts suggests that Apple isn’t taking it seriously enough.

A little update: Fellow hacker Sean Morrissey suggests:

I would use geohot’s purplera1n to get access the phone which doesn’t replace the OS. Then image the phone.

That means jailbreaking isn’t necessary, though I don’t know the specifics. He also mentions he’s working on a sort of zero-impact solution for investigators — so the G-men will have a kill switch of their own. Thanks, Sean.

iPhone Dev Team Releases 3GS Jailbreak

Daniel Brusilovsky — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:28:59 +0000

The iPhone Dev Team has released their much anticipated iPhone 3GS unlock. Last week we reported on George Hotz, the teenage hacker, who released a Windows only version of the jailbreak, and then a Mac version over the weekend. The iPhone Dev Team jailbreak isn't much different then Hotz's version — besides the point that the iPhone Dev Team released it. The Dev Team is a group of hackers dedicated to unlocking the iPhone and exposing all of its wonderful mysteries. The 3GS jailbreak, codenamed "ultrasn0w," uses the same procedure as the iPhone 3G unlock process. The Dev Team in a blog post also mentions that if you have the correct personalized (signed) dfu/img3 files, then you'll always be able to jailbreak, even if you install Apple's firmware update.

How to jailbreak the iPhone 3GS

John Biggs — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:45:42 +0000

Before I go defile myself with burgers and beer I wanted to jailbreak my iPhone 3GS for you all. The process was amazingly simple. Using a Windows netbook – it doesn’t work under Windows 7 – I simply installed iTunes and ran purplera1n. It took a second to reboot then it rolled through recovery mode, rebooted, and an app called Freeze appeared. Freeze then installed Cydia and all was right with the world.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Find a Windows PC.
2. Install iTunes.
3. Download purplera1n.
4. Run purplera1n.
5. Wait.
6. Run Freeze.
7. Reboot.

Now you’re jailbroken. To run OpenSSH simply install the OpenSSH package in Cydia and ssh to your iPhone with root/alpine login/pass combination.

Users angry that Dev Team won’t release the 3GS unlock/jailbreak

John Biggs — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:25:19 +0000

The Interweb is a tizzy over the 3GS unlock/jailbreak and the Dev Teams decision not to release it until there is a new firmware update immanent. Why would they do this? Well, if they release now, Apple can close the hole with the new release, something they’d be loathe to do if the unlock happened closer to launch. While this isn’t very nice, it’s amazingly practical and forward thinking.

Write the commentors:

How long will the line be at Apple to return the 3gs today?????

_

DEV TEAM;

I respect the reasons you are doing this, but why not keep both sides reasonably happy. Announce a date that the new jailbreak will be released (presumably sometime in the next two months) and say that if you wish to have a jailbreakable 3GS, then it would be advised they buy before this date.

Therefore, even those who still have the 1st iphone have a chance to update (even if they have to pay for two phones for one or two months). Anyone past the date will simply have to assume that their device will not be able to be jail broken.

As a 3GS owner, i do not mind waiting, as long as i know how long i am waiting for and i would think that other early upgrades would appreciate a date to look forward to.

BY ANNOUNCING A DATE, BOTH SIDES CAN BE HAPPY.

_

WE SHOULD HAVE A POLL ON WHEN IT SHOULD BE RELEASED. THE MAJORITY SHOULD WIN RIGHT?
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…”
people who have 3gs and want to jb now vs. people who have 3gs and want to wait vs. people who dont have the 3gs and who want to wait.

That's right: they're calling for free elections. Sadly, this isn't Iran but a bunch of weenies who want to unlock their iPhones 3GS. As Rob at BBG notes:

Would you like some whine with that sense of entitlement, sir?

iPhone 3GS carrier unlock imminent thanks to old exploit

John Biggs — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:00:25 +0000

An old exploit that worked to control the iPod Touch 2G can be used to take control of the iPhone 3GS, ensuring that carrier unlockers will soon be able to crack their fancy new phones. It seems a piece of boot code was left unaltered since August 2008, allowing the Dev Team to use an old exploit.

The original announcement of the iPod Touch 2G jailbreak mentions that this could be an untethered break which does not require users to connect their iPhone to a computer to run the jailbreak. Noice.

Dev Team shows off iPhone 3.0 carrier unlock, I make a little water in my pants

John Biggs — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:14:47 +0000

~~Next Tuesday~~Today the Dev Team will post – but not release – a demo of yellowsn0w running under iPhone 3.0 firmware. NB – This is not a carrier unlock for the iPhone 3G S but for the 3.0 firmware that will appear on Tuesday.

UPDATE – Sorry. Weird day today. Fixed the date. This should also work for the first gen.

On Tuesday evening (just before the big Apple release) we’ll do a live demo of the yellowsn0w carrier unlock working on official 3.0 firmware. The actual link for the feed will be twittered by @MuscleNerd and also placed here when the feed starts. The demo should answer everything you need to know about the new yellowsn0w. But it’s good news for iPhone 3G unlockers everywhere.

Meanwhile, we’re in the middle of testing our PwnageTool and QuickPwn tools, which will work with iTunes 8.2. The jailbreak of course continues to work on 3.0 for all devices it ever worked on, thanks due the Pwnage 2.0 technique released last summer. Our tools will be released no sooner than the Apple release (just in case!).

via Giz

Pre’s webOS: They like it! They really like it!

John Biggs — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 12:40:52 +0000

Developers who have been shown Palm’s new WebOS say that it is great. What does that mean for Palm? It means more devs will look to Palm as an OS of choice over WinMo and, potentially, Android as the Pre hits stores and amazes us all with its amazingness. Writes NetworkWorld:

The potential power of webOS lies in three capabilities that Palm has brought together into a coherent whole. First, mobile applications are written entirely in JavaScript, HTML and Cascading Style Sheets, which are technologies that an army of Web developers has been using for years. Second, webOS was designed from the outset to run multiple applications at once and, these developers say, to minimize the well-known potential problems that arise when doing so. Third, the application model is designed in turn to fully exploit both these features, creating, these developers say, a simpler, far more intuitive user experience.

Like the iPhone before it, webOS depends on open web-based programming tricks to create apps. Hopefully, unlike the iPhone, developers won’t want more power than is available. Jailbreaking was the primary reason iPhone’s web-based progamming toolkit was abandoned but this looks considerably more interesting.

iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 3 unofficially jailbroken

Greg Kumparak — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:15:25 +0000

Yeah – we realize how odd that headline might seem. Apple doesn’t exactly endorse jailbreaks, so the idea that any jailbreak method is “official” may seem strange. But with just about every major release coming from one group, certain releases inherently just have more cred.

Read the rest of this entry >>