Apple has just released the new firmware 2.1 beta to developers. Firmware 2.1 brings a better GPS integration for 3G devices to allow using it as a real navigation receiver. The GPS feature “Core Location” can now also detect the speed and the direction of your moves. For 2G and 3G users there will be an update included for better integration of push notifications.
Along with this beta Apple shipped the new SDK. But currently this new SDK cannot be used to provide Apps to the AppStore.
We are not aware yet, if this update solves the slowing-down issues of Apps (we reported here).
It seems Apple wants to make the iPhone more secure. Currently they are searching for a security expert to validate the security architecture for the iPhone.
(..)
Responsibilities
Review and provide feedback on security mechanisms implemented in OS X
* Provide risk analysis of potential security threats to our embedded products
* Develop “proof of concept” attacks on the current security mechanisms
* Come up with new and innovative ways of increasing security while preserving ease-of-use and increasing the quality of the end-user experience.
(..)
Required Experience:
* A genuine passion for analyzing security technologies and developing “proof of concept” attacks
* Demonstrated creative and critical thinking capabilities and troubleshooting skills
* Industry exposure to and knowledge of OS security and UNIX internals
(..)
Reading this, we think it might not be too easy to find a probable employee whoes curriculum vitae is not in violation of the DMCA. Since this really sounds like a nice job offer only to guys formerly known as hackers…
The Microsoft Windows division of users can be glad again. WinPwn 2.0 has just been released by its creator and maintainer CMW. It features activating, jailbreaking and unlocking iPhone 2G and activating and jailbreaking of iPhone 3G.
Because of the overwhelming demand for a Windows version of Pwnage, the website http://www.winpwn.com is currently not easily available. Anyway you can try to download WinPwn 2 here.
Vodafone yesterday announced to offer a data-plan for customers who actually bought an unlocked iPhone in a foreign country. The data-plan requires a normal fon-plan by vodafone, means: the iPhone plan is an upgrade. The interesting point is the price.
This flatrate costs 9,95€/month surcharge to a current fon-plan. It gets slowed down from HDSPA to EDGE/GPRS speeds after having transmitted 500MBytes.
In contrast to original T-Mobile Germany iPhone plans Vodafone does not permit using Voice-Over-IP (VoIP), Instant Messaging (IM) or VPN – means they tolerate that you even jailbreak your iPhone in order to install third party apps, that are not provided through the official Apple AppStore.
The struggle for the cheapest iPhone plan has begun.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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…
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 :-)
