Teenage hacker unlocks the iPhone

[JJ63]

A New Jersey teenager has unlocked the iPhone, opening the way to Apple's iconic mobile telephone being used by non-US networks.

The Associated Press news agency confirmed George Hotz, 17, had unlocked the iPhone and used it on T-Mobile, a rival to its sole US operator, AT&T.
The hacker says the unlocking takes about two hours and involves some soldering and skill with software. AT&T and Apple have not yet commented on the news.

Hackers and security researchers have been poring over Apple's much-coveted phone since its launch in the US in June in an effort to discover vulnerabilities in the handset.


Top of their list has been cracking the code that ties the phone to AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive network.
Before George Hotz's announcement on his blog, the iPhone was made to work on overseas networks using another method, which involves copying information from the Sim (Subscriber Identity Module) card.
However, special equipment was needed and the actual phone was not unlocked, with each Sim card having to be reprogrammed for use on a particular iPhone. Analysts believe Apple may still have time to modify the iPhone production line to make new phones invulnerable to the hacks before the iPhone's expected European launch later this year.

The young hacker says he hopes phone-owners can eventually unlock their phones by themselves, and that he hopes his discovery will not be exploited for commercial gain.

The next step, he said, would be a non-solder solution: a way to unlock the phone using software alone.


Technology blog Engadget said on Friday that it had successfully unlocked an iPhone using a different method that required no tinkering with the hardware. The software was supplied by an anonymous group of hackers that apparently plans to charge for it, AP reports.
The agency notes that both the Hotz and Sim techniques leave the iPhone's many functions intact apart from its "visual voicemail" feature, which shows voice messages as if they are incoming e-mail.
The New Jersey hacker says he collaborated online with four other people, two of them in Russia, to develop the unlocking process.
He spent about 500 hours on the project since the launch on 29 June.

[richard]

It appears that A&T is making threatening noises in direction of folks who have been developing software that will let an iPhone be used without AT&T activation. AT&T ought to chill out instead.

Since the company says it is not subsidizing the price of the iPhone, it's not like would-be unlockers are going to take the subsidy and run, which is a wireless operator's main reason for wanting to block unlocking. A U.S. owner of an unlocked iPhone only has two choices, neither of them terribly appealing. One is to use only Wi-Fi wireless, but I'm not sure I get the point of an iPhone that isn't a phone. The other is the use it on the T-Mobile network, which doesn't confer any particular advantage, unless you happen to be in one of the few area's where T-Mo's service is better than AT&T's.

The real demand for unlocked phones is coming from the 90% of the world where you cannot use an AT&T iPhone without paying extravagant roaming charges. And what skin is it off AT&T's back if someone wants to use an iPhone on the Vodafone or Orange network?

Meanwhile, the folks who are bit by bit unraveling the mysteries of the iPhone that Apple and AT&T have tried so hard to keep secret are doing everyone a favor. The iPhone is a revolutionary device, but the desire of Apple and AT&T to keep it within a garden with very high walls is a huge step backward--and one that increasingly looks doomed to failure.

businessweek.com