Monthly Archives: July 2008

[iPhone] Experienced Issues with Firmware 2.0

After some days of using a pwned iPhone 2G with firmware 2.0, we found some issues. As of now, we don’t know where they come from. But we definitly know: we don’t like them.

  • WiFi doesn’t stay connected, it falls “asleep” and takes time to reconnect
  • the more apps have been used, the longer it takes to see reactions
    means: if you click on contacts and have used Safari, SMS and Youtube before, opening of contacts takes a lot longer than after an fresh reboot!
  • loading the contacts take 5-10 seconds
  • scrolling through contacts is jerky and freezes the view from time to time
  • scrolling through photos is jerky and freezes the view from time to time
  • launching the camera takes up to 10 seconds
  • the unlock slider may not react in time and you may miss a call
  • keyboard reacts slower than on 1.1.4
  • reaction time is heavily delayed (or seems not to react at all for more than 17 seconds – see video below)

We won’t blame anyone for this, because on the one hand this could be an effect of Pwning the iPhone and on the other hand these issues might be “features” of the original unmodified firmware 2.0 aswell. See update below, this is a firmware 2.0 issue.

Anyway we feel there are heavy problems with the memory management in firmware 2.0, that need to be addressed soon. Workflow was a lot faster with firmware 1.1.4.

As of now we just reboot the iPhone once a day, but this really is no working solution for such a device. We feel this reminiscent to Windows 95 times is not necessary.

Update: it has been reported this may come from Cydia. As we’re investigating this issue, we get back to you once we found a solution.

Update: Pumpkin of the iPhone Dev Team reports this most likely is an issue of the original firmware 2.0. Native iPhone users have also experienced this behaviour (see reports here in Apple’s forums). The internet is full of reports. Do a Google search you will find plenty of people reporting these issues.

[iPhone] xPwn 0.3 Released

The restless working iPhone Dev Team has just released the source-code of their commandline tool collection xPwn. Although the tool collection allows to jailbreak (iPhone 2G and 3G) and unlock (iPhone 2G only), it targets mainly at developers.

Get the source-code for Linux, MacOS X and Windows and here. Planetbeing of the iPhone Dev Team highly recommends to read the README before playing around with the tool collection.

[iPhone] iPhone 3G Baseband Bootloader 5.8 Dumped

Ta_Mobile of the Vietnamese hardware division GSMVN succeeded in dumping the baseband bootloader 5.8 of an iPhone 3G. Ta_Mobile has also dumped bootloader 4.6. Reverse engineering of the 3G bootloader will now begin to find possible exploits. Don’t expect anything soon, but this is great news anyway.

Congrats to Vietnam. Standing work, guys…

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

[iPhone] Geohot releases iRan

iRan is a tool that makes use of Geohot’s findings dated last year about the iBoot. He found out that in DFU mode it offers a full interactive shell. But it took almost a year to allow execution of non-signed code. The iPhone Dev Team now used this in their Pwnage Tool 2.0 for expanding privileges in order to perform activation and jailbreak of iPhones.

Geohot provides this tiny tool “to run whatever you want at the DFU level. (..) Pass it a binary file, it will start executing at the start of the file(no file formats to deal with).”

We’ll leave it up to you to find out what you can do with this tool…

[e-Biz] Open Tech: The Next Mac Clone Manufacturer

Open Tech inc. – a previously unknown company is in the starting blocks to provide Intel based computers that are able to run MacOS X. We hackintoshed seniors may be irritated by such an announcement since almost any Intel based computer is able to run MacOS X, nowadays.

In contrast to Psystar, who is currently being sued by Apple for copyright violation, Open Tech inc. will not pre-install MacOS X on their computers. As there is currently no more information available, stay tuned for more news…

[iPhone] Pwnage for Windows 2.0 (WinPwn) waits in its wings

CMW – the developer of the Microsoft Windows version of Pwnage tool announced that WinPwn is about to be released. On http://www.winpwn.com he writes: “Expect a release within the next few days!”.

That sounds like a release on the weekend. Windows users help is on its way. In the meantime scroll the Apple pages and consider buying a Mac :-)

[iPhone] HowTo Activate and Unlock your iPhone using Pwnage 2.0

Article is outdated. Find newest Jailbreak and Unlock HowTo for iPhone Firmware 3.0 here.

Note

We need to stress: respect the laws of the country you live in. For instance as german citizen with a T-Mobile Germany plan and iPhone you are not allowed to jailbreak or unlock your iPhone. T-Mobile is not kidding in this topic, as we’ve all seen with the sipgate sue (we reported here). This tutorial is in no way meant as an invitation to do things that are in violation of your contracts. We cannot be held responsible for bricking your devices. You do everything at your own risk and responsibility. Thanks.

I. Abstract

Pwnage Tool 2.0 is the newest tool to unlock and jailbreak “old” iPhones (iPhone 2G) and jailbreak “new” iPhones (iPhone 3G). It is developed, maintained and provided for free by the iPhone Dev Team. The Dev Team already provided Pwnage Tool 1.0 (see recent tutorial here).

This tutorial is for Mac users only who previously activated and unlocked their iPhones using Pwnage Tool 1.0. The release of Pwnage Tool 2.0 has been delayed in the last few days because of several bugfixes and issues that occurred during latest test. As we’ve used Pwnage Tool 2.0 in the last hours on some old iPhones, we can say: in contrast to Pwnage Tool 1.0, we encountered some problems with Pwnage Tool 2.0. Keeping that in mind it is your own risk to prolly brick your iPhone. We cannot be held responsible for your actions.

II. Preparations

A Microsoft Windows version of Pwnage 2.0 has not yet been released. Get yourself a Mac, it really is time to switch :-)

You need to download and install a couple of programs

  • download and install Pwnage Tool 2.0.1 (here or here) / Updated links to new Pwnage 2.0.1
  • download bootloaders.rar (for legal reasons, we can’t provide a direct download link as we are in Germany. Do a simple Google search for bootloaders.rar)
  • update to iTunes 7.7 (using Apple Software Update)
  • download iPhone Restore Firmware 2.0 (here)

III. Fasten your seatbelts

Before taking off, we highly recommend to do the following preparations on your iPhone:

  • backup/synchronize current calendar and address book using iTunes
  • backup current SMS using Syphone (download here)

In case you didnot, we highly recommend you read our tutorial about activating and unlocking iPhones with firmware 1.1.4 (see here).

IV. Take off

…into the wide open world of unlocked and jailbroken iPhones.

  1. Start Pwnage Tool 2.0, and click OK.

  2. Choose Expert Mode

  3. Select iPhone 2G, and click the blue arrow

  4. After clicking the blue arrow you will see a window like this:

    Note: we encountered errors when browsing for the IPSW firmware that we manually downloaded several times:

    We circumvented this error by letting iTunes download the firmware. But be careful let iTunes only download the firmware. Don’t choose download and install!!!

  5. When Pwnage feels like the Firmware is the right one, it will show this picture, where we can manually change some settings. We highly recommend to change nothing but the Cydia packages. We even leave the pictures the same.

  6. Inside the Cydia packages menu we recommend to choose these files for download:
    OpenSSH, Cydia Installer, and Cydia's Source Set. These files will automatically become downloaded in the background.



  7. Make sure you select the above downloaded Cydia packages. Under Select packages you can check them, in case the packages are not pre-chosen for including into your custom IPSW. Then click the blue arrow again.

  8. After having clicked the blue arrow again, we may choose new logos. We recommend to leave these as they are and click the blue arrow again.

  9. Pwnage Tool 2.0 feels we are ready and shows “Build” with a checkmark. We click the blue arrow again and can already smell the pwrn.

  10. You may provide the bootloaders now, by clicking No to search the web for them (we only show the 4.6 bootloader question, in fact there will be same question for the 3.9 bootloader).


  11. After having chosen the bootloader Pwnage needs to know where to save the custom IPSW file. It will show a picture similar to this:

    After having chosen the target filename and folder, Pwnage will submissively begin its work.

    At a specific point of work, Pwnage will require your admin password. This is due to a limitation of access to the filesystem.

  12. After working some minutes you will be shown this menu. Since we are all obedient Pwnage users (aren’t we?) we already had used Pwnage 1.0 before. And therefore we choose Yes.
  13. Pwrnage Tool will wish us the best for our recovery and wants to be quitted:

V. Approach for Landing

  1. As our odysee thru iPhonitis is not over, we need to start iTunes (we have our iPhones connected!). And we choose the iPhone menu in iTunes (looks like this picture:)

  2. We need to restore our 0wn firmware, therefore we need to hold the ALT key and press Restore Button. We will get a dialog, where we can choose our custom firmware:

  3. iTunes will begin its work of extracting and restoring our custom firmware. This process will take some minutes. Don’t disconnect during this period. You would have an expensive brick then.

  4. After restoring successfully the custom firmware to your iPhone your iPhone will reboot and eventually show a screen that indicates that the baseband is currently in process of getting unlocked:

  5. After the baseband flashing has been finished, your iPhone will reboot again and will show up with firmware 2.0. We hope you enjoyed your flight with incomplete-news airways. We wish you a good stay on Eff-Doubleyou-Two-Dot-Oh. We recommend to pick up your baggage in the claim area.

VI. Baggage Claim Area

  1. You may now decide to set up your system clean and configure everything anew or simply choose to restore your old settings (like eMail-accounts, calendar, photos, muzaq, and videos):

  2. After having clicked Continue you will see this picture. It depends on how many things you had saved on your iPhone and how much space it’s got. Our 4GB testmodel only took about 5 minutes to get all settings restored:

  3. After restoring the settings your iPhone will reboot…
  4. To get back your EDGE settings, simply follow our tutorial here (see part II.)_T_H_E__Z_E_N__W_A_Y_ . In firmware 2.0 the EDGE menu is now called “Cellular Data Network”).

VII. Final words

Congratulations. You’re finished now. In case any of you got questions, don’t hesitate to ask below in our comments section. We hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Thanks for your attention. Big shouts fly out to the iPhone Dev Team. You guys simply rock our hearts…

[iPhone] Pwnage Tool 2.0 released

Eventually the iPhone Dev Team released their long awaited Pwnage Tool 2.0 for Mac. You can download here and here. As expected it supports jailbreaking and unlocking of “old” iPhones and jailbreaking of 3G iPhones and iPod Touch. It’s been reported there are issues with installing the installer.app. Note that this is only the Apple Mac version of Pwnage, there is currently no information when Pwnage for Windows (WinPwn) will be released.

Please allow some hours for testing the new Pwnage. We’ll publish a tutorial during the next hours. We need to check Pwnage carefully. Update: Tutorial has been released. See here.

Congrats to the iPhone Dev Team.

[iPhone] iPhone 3G unlocked using Bladox Turbo SIM

[Update] Aug/25th/2008: read here, everything you gotta know about Proxy SIM solutions.

The Bladox Team has released an application for their Turbo SIM (see here how proxy SIMs work) that is obviously able to bypass the SIM lock of 3G iPhones – means unlocking it. The application is still beta and might not work on the entire planet, but it obviously does in the U.K. The name of the app is zerog-0.95.tar.gz, but for legal reasons we will not directly link it.

See this video:

It takes ages until it is logged it, but anyway it documents the current status quite well…

[iPhone] iPhone 3G sold out in Switzerland

Switzerland a beautiful country and a wonderful place to buy 3G iPhones. The Swiss carrier Swisscom offers the iPhone 3G with a prepaid SIM card. Forum reports confirm that foreigners can buy these aswell. Only two problems remain: first the Swisscom iPhone is completely sold out on Switzerland and second it is SIM locked to Swisscom (offical unlocked carrier list here). But as reported by us yesterday, a SIM proxy adapter unlock occurred in Vietnam. We expect this adapter to very soon hit the markets worldwide.