Finally - someone I trust told me they unlocked an iPhone. Congrats to my teenage pal Shooby for proving he’s one smart kid. Smart enough to unlock an iPhone. He’s got a video of the process on his blog.
I’ve invited him to the studio to talk about it next week.
But just for the record, I still think it’s a bad idea for most people to try this. Shooby is like a rocket scientist in a teenager’s body. If you look at the process, it’s not for the feint of heart. He makes it look easy. You may not have the same success. And there’s a real chance that the unlock will at best be broken with the next version of iTunes and at worst, that you’ll brick your phone.
But congrats to Shooby anyway. Too bad he’s too young to run for President.
Props to Shooby for the work.
Clever URL too.
Now, go to bed, it’s almost midnight Shooby.
A gentle warning for anyone installing OpenSSH on their iPhone: make sure you uninstall it when done, or change the root password on the device afterwards. If you run around with OpenSSH installed and the default password of “dottie” you’re leaving your entire iPhone and all its data open to hackers on any open WiFi you might happen to automatically connect to. Are you likely to get hacked…maybe not, but why leave the device open.
If you don’t know how to change the password in terminal, you probably shouldn’t be messing around with this kind of stuff to begin with, but you can change the password easily by typing “passwd” at the terminal prompt after SSHing into the iPhone and follow the prompts.
I’m not sure you need to be as sharp as rocket scientist Shooby to do this hack, but I’ve been following the IRC chat on #iphone.unlock and some people do seem to run into trouble with this and take a few times to get it right.
I’ll wager that by the time you have Shooby in the studio to discuss this, that the iPhone Dev Team (the hackers working on the open source hacks) will have released a GUI version of the iUnlock app that can be downloaded and installed with the Installer.app used to install most of the open source hacks and applications out there right now. This will make the process pretty much a no-brainer beyond following the first 3 steps in the instructions Shooby has that you linked to.
That said, if you already have an iPhone, chances are you are already on contract with AT&T, so what’s the big deal here? Are you going to cancel (with fees) AT&T to switch to T-Mobile for fewer features and arguable worse coverage? Oh well, I am interested in the hack personally for two reasons:
1) I just like hacking things. Part of the culture I guess.
2) I don’t want to get hit with a $12,000 roaming charge from AT&T on my next trip to England; so an easy to install hack that will let me use a British sim card while there will bring some peace of mind without having to leave the iPhone turned off.
In my scenario #2, it wouldn’t matter if Apple breaks the hack, I’m only using it for a brief period that I wouldn’t be updating the firmware during anyways. Given the nature of the way the phone is locked, I don’t think Apple will be able to break the unlocking process for any long term.
Scott -
I agree, but rather than President, how about NASA Chief. Anyway, I used his easy to follow instructions and was able to switch to T-Mobile in less than 5 minutes.
NOOOOO
This stuff is for the large of brain. I admire the work of Shooby and his ilk. I DO understand what they are doing MAY be illegal in the strict sense of the word. But it is now HIS phone and he can brick it if he wants.
What I truly appreciate about the NON malicious Hacker Community is their ability to keep progress progressing. Without this tenacious group of coders the industry would be at a stand still (2 cans and a string anyone?).
The iPhone itself was a hacked device, when you think about it. An “outside” company trying to break into the gazillion dollar cell industry - and just as hated for the effort as the Shooby crew. So keep on hacking people (non destructively and within the limits of legal commerce). We, the unhacked iPhone community will benefit.
Thanks-
That Ray Guy
@Ray Guy,
Nothing illegal going on. There’s a specific provision in the DMCA that allows an individual to unlock their own phone until at least 2009.
The method Shooby used is about the 5th or 6th unlocking solution to appear (and by far the easiest so far) over the past 2 months, and no lawyers have lifted a finger against either doers or distributors. That’s even though there’s a commercial manufacturer that has been selling bypass hardware for the past month.
(There was a rumor reported by IDG a few weeks ago that AT&T lawyers had contacted a Belfast outfit in the middle of the night, but that was proved by the hacker community to be an outright lie to gain publicity.)
However…
There’s a better than even chance that this sort of unlock will need to be redone when Firmware 1.1.1 appears in a short while, as it is likely to patch the baseband (whether deliberately be Apple to relock the phone or just as a natural consequence of fixing bugs).
If you’re in the US, on balance I wouldn’t recommend doing it unless you had a very specific need (and you would likely to be already following the hacker scene if you did).
You’d still need a plan, and AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s are pretty much equivalent, and only AT&T gives you Visual Voicemail.
It’s of primary interest to those outside the US, and also outside the UK/France/Germany zone, as the “Mum’s no longer the word” announcement next week will bring the iPhone shipping party there too!
The net effect of the unlock, though, should be to increase iPhone sales, as more and more people around the planet gain the ability to use it. There are over 400 GSM carriers around the world, and an unlocked iPhone can be used on any of them. So, if Apple’s wise, they wouldn’t move too aggressively to rehide the unlock technique in the baseband.
10 million, here we come! Buy AAPL stock!
That’s Our Shooby!
Have you had Shooby in studio to discuss this yet, or was my earlier prediction that the Dev Team would have a GUI app to unlock come true?
Link here: http://iphone.fiveforty.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page