iPhone 3GS Jailbroken! A Teenager has Hacked It!

George Hotz, an enterprising teen hacker who goes by the name Purplera1n, won fame and infamy in 2007 when he became the first to free the iPhone from its AT&T U.S. SIM card restrictions.  As a reward, Mr. Hotz won a hot set of wheels -- the Nissan 350Z and a paid consulting job with CertiCell, a cell phone services company.

Now a little older and taller, Mr. Hotz, age 19, has distinguished himself again, becoming the first to publish a jailbreak solution for the iPhone 3G S -- a fix to allow the phone to run apps not approved by Apple.  The first step is to visit Mr. Hotz's page and download the "purplera1n" app.  Mr. Hotz describes the following steps on his blog, writing:

Connect your iPhone normally. Click “make it ra1n”. Wait. On bootup, run Freeze, the purplera1n installer app.

The Freeze installer will install an app called Cydia which allows you to run any application on the iPhone -- Apple approved or not.

Using this newfound freedom, the iPhone's SIM card can be unlocked to run on any network by using the previously released ultrasn0w by the Dev Team.  The Dev Team, not affiliated with Mr. Hotz had published the ultrasn0w app, but had declined to release a fix to jailbreak the iPhone, essentially rendering the app useless (as it was not Apple approved).

The Dev Team had stated that it would release a jailbreak with the OS update v3.1.  Mr. Hotz was frustrated by this, so he took matters into his own hands.  He accuses the Dev Team of delaying the jailbreak release for fear of an Apple patch, chastising, "Normally I don't make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn't how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn't worth waiting because you might have the "last" hole in the iPhone. What last hole...this isn't golf. I'll find a new one next week."

A Windows-compatible version of the iPhone unlocking tool came last week, and this weekend brought a Mac compatible version.  The Windows version is not compatible with Windows 7, according to Mr. Hotz's blog, and it requires the iPhone to be running OS v3.0 and for the latest version of iTunes to be installed.

[via Daily Tech]

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Free iPhone Jailbreak banned - latest iPhone developer agreement

The "iPhone Developer Program License Agreement" governs what iPhone developers can and cannot do. Now, jailbreaking, assisting in jailbreaking, and developing and distributing jailbreak apps are among the things that the latest revision of that agreement does not condone.

Of course, Apple forbids the creation of apps that violate privacy, facilitate crimes, or violate intellectual property laws. But registered developers can no longer jailbreak their own phones or assist others in jailbreaking their phones, including (but not limited to) working on projects such as QuickPwn or PwnageTool. Developers are also forbidden from using the iPhone OS, SDK, or other developer tools to develop applications for distribution in any way other than the App Store or Ad Hoc distribution—which of course rules out distribution via Cydia, free or otherwise.

The relevant clauses in the agreement, a copy of which was made available to Ars, are as follows:

(e)You will not, through use of the Apple Software, services or otherwise, create any Application or other program that would disable, hack or otherwise interfere with the Security Solution, or any security, digital signing, digital rights management, verification or authentication mechanisms implemented in or by the iPhone operating system software, iPod touch operating system software, this Apple Software, any services or other Apple software or technology, or enable others to do so; and

(f) Applications developed using the Apple Software may only be distributed if selected by Apple (in its sole discretion) for distribution via the App Store or for limited distribution on Registered Devices (ad hoc distribution) as contemplated in this Agreement.

Though jailbreaking allows access to apps that Apple doesn't approve of and enables unlocking the phone from approved carriers, it also allows users and developers access to the UNIX underpinnings of iPhone OS, which both groups could have perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting.

Read the whole article @ ARS Technica

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