It is a sad day for our Jailbreak Pirate, so sad that he is even sporting a frown today. Apple has finally, after a full year plus, publicly came out saying that Jailbreaking the iPhone that you paid for is illegal. Does this mean the FBI will be knocking on Rene’s door to lock him up for Jailbreaking publicly over the internet???

[No, I'm Canadian, so all I have to fear is the red surge of the Mounties - Rene]

Read more after the break!

Apple states that Jailbreaking is a copyright infringement and is in clear violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The US Copyright Office has a rule-making session that occurs every three years for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This is also where exemption requests can be filed. Well it seems the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an exemption request for Jailbreaking iPhones. Apple has now responded to this request. You can see the complete filing here in this PDF file. If you don’t feel like reading all of that here is the important part:

Jailbreaking therefore involves infringing uses of the bootloader and OS, the copyrighted works that are protected by the TPMs being circumvented. Unauthorized derivative versions of the bootloader and OS have been created. Copies of those infringing works have been stored on web sites, and infringing reproductions of those works are created each time they are downloaded through Pwnage Tool and loaded onto the iPhone.33 In addition, as discussed in Section II.B.2 above, the jailbroken OS enables pirated copies of Apple copyrighted content and other third party content such as games and applications to play on the iPhone, resulting in further infringing uses of copyrighted works and diminished incentive to create those works in the first place. In sum, the jailbreaking of the iPhone that would be permitted by the proposed Class #1 exemption in 5A and 11A would result in infringing uses of copyrighted works. It would involve the creation, distribution, and copying of unauthorized modified versions of the bootloader and OS, and it would facilitate and encourage the making, distribution, and use of infringing copies of copyrighted material such as games and applications, owned by both Apple and third parties, that run only on jailbroken phones. The proposed exemption therefore does not satisfy the fundamental prerequisite of the statute that it aid “noninfringing uses” of copyrighted works and should be rejected.

It goes on and on but hopefully you get the idea. So what do you think? Will Apple now go after the Dev Team for their Jailbreaking software, QuickPWN and PWNage Tool? Lawyers will be the ones handling this one and it should be interesting to pay close attention to this.

[ViaGizmodo]

For the first time ever, the complete iPhone Dev Team finally got together and met each other face to face. They gathered recently and gave a presentation at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

Keep in mind the video is 58 minutes long and they do go pretty deep but it is definitely a interesting thing to check out. My favorite part of the whole thing comes in around the 2 minute 30 second mark: there are 180 IP addresses inside Apple that the Dev Team have tracked who have “updated their quickpwn and pwnage tool on a regular basis”.

Very interesting indeed.

[Via Gizmodo]

Disclaimer: This guide is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Neither TiPb nor the author take any responsibility for any problems/issues/bricking/etc. that may occur while using this or any software to modify your iPhone. Please be aware of what you are doing. If you’re not sure, don’t do it.

Note to New Macbook Owners – if you have a late 2008 model aluminum MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air and have not previously Pwned your iPhone (under firmware 2.1 or earlier), the issues we blogged about previously mean you will have to use a different computer to Jailbreak 2.2.1. Sorry folks. If you have already Pwned under 2.1 or previous, then you can simply put your iPhone into recovery mode and restore with the freshly created IPSW. (If you don’t understand what all that means, keep reading, or go to our Jailbreak Central Forum for help)

This applies if you have a locked iPhone 3G and you wish to update to 2.2.1 but preserve the iPhone’s current baseband software. Preserving the baseband will ensure that you can still use “yellowsn0w” the iPhone 3G unlock application. To upgrade your phone to 2.2.1 and preserve the state of the baseband you need to create a custom .ipsw with PwnageTool. This custom .ipsw will not contain the baseband update but of course will still give you any new stuff from 2.2.1

*You must be on firmware 2.2 or below in order to preserve your baseband. If you are already on 2.2.1 prior to Jailbreaking you will not be able to unlock your phone.

Let’s get started, after the jump!

1. Get the Tools

First things first, make sure you are running the latest version of iTunes [8.0.2]

Then you will want to create a folder on your desktop to keep things clean. Name it whatever you’d like.

Next you want to download the Pwnage 2.2.5 tool to the folder you just created.

Now download the 2.2.1 iPhone 3G firmware. Make sure to place that in the above folder as well. If you are able to use Firefox for this download, please do so. In the last set of guides, many of you had issues downloading the file with Safari.

2. Install the Tools

Now double click on the PwnageTool file to mount PwnageTool. Once mounted click and drag the PwnageTool application into the Pwnage folder you created on your desktop.

Then double click the icon that was just created to launch the PwnageTool.

3. Expert Mode

This is a easy one, select “Expert Mode”.

4. Select your Device

Which in this case would be the iPhone 3G.

5. Browse for IPSW

Click the blue arrow button to continue. You will be brought to the “Browse for IPSW” page. It should automatically find the correct file, then click the blue arrow to continue. If Pwnage does not find the file, you must manually browse to the IPSW file that is in the folder you created on your desktop.

6. Menu with 7 Options

You will then be brought to a menu with 7 different options. We will only address the “General” and “Custom Package Settings”. More advanced users can make any changes they see fit. Select the “General” tab and then click the blue arrow button to move forward.

When you are in the “General” tab there are a few things you must take care of. Here you will decide your partition size, 530 MB should be good. Next, if you are using your iPhone on an official carrier (AT&T, O2, Rogers, etc.) uncheck “Activate the phone”. Lastly, check “Disable partition wipe-out”. Hit the arrow button to continue.

Next select the “Custom Package Settings” tab. Be sure that “Cydia Installer” and “Installer” are both checked, hit the arrow to move to the next step.

7. Ready to Begin Pwnage Process!

Click the “Build” button and then click the arrow to begin the Pwnage process.

Now simply select where you would like to save the custom IPSW file that will be created. The folder you created on your desktop would be a good place.

Your IPSW is being created. Please be patient during this process, it could take up to 15 minutes. During this time Pwnage will ask for your administrator password, this is normal, enter it.

8. DFU Mode

First you will be prompted to shut off your iPhone.

This next part seems to give some people trouble, pay close attention. Pwnage will ask you to hold the home button and the power button for 10 seconds. Then, you will have to release the power button and hold the home button for 10 seconds. This should put you in DFU.

If you have succeeded you will see the following graphic.

*Important Note – The new Macbooks that were recently released prevent you from entering DFU mode. It is possible to go from 2.1 Pwned to 2.2.1 Pwned but you will not be able to go from 2.1 stock to 2.2.1 Pwned. Got that? In order to proceed, you must enter recovery mode as outlined in this Apple Knowledge Base article.

9. iTunes Restore

Now we have to go into iTunes and restore the iPhone with the custom built firmware. Do so by pressing the Alt/Option button and click “Restore”.

Simply select the following file, “iPhone1,22.2.15G77CustomRestore.ipsw”, from the folder on your desktop.

iTunes is now restoring the firmware on your iPhone. This can take up to 10-15 minutes.

When complete you will be asked to “set up as a new iPhone” or “restore from a backup”. You can select either option but my recommendation is to start fresh and select “set up as a new iPhone”.

Congratulations! You are now the owner of a freshly jailbroken iPhone 3G with the 2.2.1 firmware!

Have questions? Run into problems? Check out our Jailbreak Central Forum for help!

Let me just start off by saying that the iPhone 3G unlock feature is not yet available in the latest Dev Team software, QuickPwn and the PwnageTool, but you are now able to jailbreak the 2.2 firmware!

It is important to note: Things have gotten a bit more complicated compared to previous releases. If you are users of first generation iPod Touches, 2G/EDGE (first generation) iPhones, factory unlocked iPhone 3G’s (the kind you can buy in places like Hong Kong) or you just have no interest in software unlocking your iPhone 3G – you can use the QuickPwn tool. If you are an iPhone 3G user that is interested in unlocking, Apple has tossed a monkey wrench in the mix for you. The 2.2 firmware upgraded the baseband. This forces you to use PwnageTool (available to Mac users only at the moment) to create a custom .ipsw file that keeps the 2.1 baseband but adds in the software functionality of the 2.2 update.

Please read the official post from the Dev Team for the all of the details, instructions, and downloads. And be sure to hit our Jailbreak Central Forum more news and help.

Good luck to you all!

[Via blog-iphone-dev.org]

I have a funny feeling that sometime shortly after the 2.2 firmware drops, we will see the iPhone 3G software unlock in the next version of the ever so popular PWNage tools from the Dev Team.

They just updated their blog with more good news, the ability to spawn background tasks. Which is great and means they have everything they need for the unlock except for the implementation. Watch the video above for more details.

Keep up the good work guys. Everyone here at TiPb appreciate your work!

[Via blog.iPhone-dev.org]

Take that Apple! The Dev Team has gone and done it again and has struck back at Apple with a vengeance. If you were wondering when you would be able to jailbreak the 2.1 firmware wonder no more… Only one day after Apple released firmware 2.1 the Dev Team responded with not only Pwnage 2.1, but QuickPwn 1.1 as well!

While you may have heard about Apple fighting back the other day against jailbreakers with iTunes 8, this has been taken into consideration by the Dev Team and they’ve built in the patches to correct the iTunes error.

By the way we figured out a way to combat iTunes 8 without patches…and we’re waiting to see what Apple tries next. But we think they might want to rethink their priorities. They probably won’t though, and so we get back to the “cat and mouse” game between Apple and the Dev Team and other third-party communities.

This software is for Mac users only so Windows users will have to wait a little longer to jailbreak the 2.1 firmware. It is important to note, there is still no available software unlock method for the iPhone 3G. I’m beginning to think we may not see one anytime soon. Like always TiPb takes no responsibility for any wrong doings that may occur while jailbreaking. So please be informed before you give this a try. For more information visit the jailbreaking section in our forums.

So what are you waiting for?! Go ahead and download it!

(Via iPhone-Dev.org and thanks for the tip Darkknight!)

We have an update from iphone-dev that falls in the good news / not-so-good news category. The not-so-good is that they’re still hard at work on figuring out how to unlock the baseband radio, but there’s no ETA on when or (here’s the bad part) whether it’s going to happen.

On the good news front, the Jailbreak for 2.0.1 is still humming along nicely and the team has put together a little tool called QuickPwn which allows you to jailbreak without having to sit through a full restore afterwards. I was forced to restore my iPhone over the weekend (so much for trusting ‘Update All’ on the on-device App Store), so I can tell you that avoiding this lengthy process is a Good Thing. QuickPwn is still very early in development and currently only available for Windows. You’ll also be forgoing a “funky UI,” but that’s a small price to pay for getting that hour or so of your life back.

via Bad Ash at the iPhone Blog Forums and Gizmodo

So it seems Apple isn’t the only one who can maintain break-neck code drop schedules. The iPhoneDev Team is back already with the latest version of their pineapple-iconed Pwange tool for jailbreaking iPhone 3G and iPod Touch, and jailbreaking and unlocking the original iPhone 2G.

Version 2.0.2 for use with 2.0.1 may be a little confusing for some, so maybe a better numbering system can be worked out there, but this update also includes the beta Installer.app 4, as well as Cydia.

Want it? rev up your Pwnage’s sparkle-powered Software Update (what a world we live in…) or head on over to the iPhoneDev Team site.

And, as always, whenever performing ninja-like acts on your hardware, proceed with caution.

(Via TUAW)

This is fun. It’s like a game of cat and mouse between Apple firmware and the jailbreaking community, Apple launches an update and the iPhone-dev team works feverishly to jailbreak said update. This time, they are said to be putting the finishing touches on PwnageTool 2.0.2 which will be able to jailbreak the “snappier” 2.0.1.

Excited much? Well, there still won’t be Installer.app because Installer 4 isn’t ready for the primetime yet but a new version of Cydia will be there so you can still get some apps. There still is a lot of catching up to do on developing jailbroken apps and it still won’t unlock the iPhone 3G, but all in due time. We’ll follow up with a link to PwnageTool 2.0.2 when it is released.

ReadVia

Tired of the three-percenter Mac population hogging all the iPhone Unlock/Jailbreak/Pwnage goodness for their eye-candied, single-button’ied selves? No longer!

The Windows version of the iphone-dev team’s Pwnage tool, WinPwn, is now available:

Support for both 1.1.4 and 2.0, Custom Image Support, Custom Payload Support, 3g iPhone support

So, if you really want to Pwn your iPhone and haven’t already hunted down that turtle-neck wearing snob at the sushi bar and commandeered the aluminum sliver that passes for his laptop, your Microsoft compatible version awaits…

Depending on your carrier, their terms of service (TOS), and your willingness to break said terms and face possible consequences including death-by-over-billing, you can now tether you newly pwned/jailbroken iPhone 3G to your laptop to share the mobile 3G internet connection anywhere and everywhere you go (your coverage area, of course, may vary).

The process is a little involved, according to Macrumors (via Cre.ations.net):

Jailbreak your iPhone 3G. Install 3Proxy and Terminal. Create an ad-hoc Wi-fi network using your laptop. Join the network with your iPhone. Find the iPhone’s IP address Open Terminal and run the proxy program. Open Safari on your iPhone and open a web page. Configure your browser to use the proxy.

Not a 133t level hax0r? Don’t worry. AT&T (and other carriers) might just offer this option, complete with inevitable bandwidth cap, ‘natch, sometime in the next millennium…

UPDATE: Pawnage has been updated to address some of the problems users faced over the weekend, including better discovery of the boot loaders, creation of the devices folder, etc.

Original post:

Starting with the cryptic announcement “We love Sundays. We think you will too”, the iphone-dev-team followed up quickly with the words many (including all those with unsupported countries and carriers) have been waiting clamoring for:

We’ll be releasing a more official announcement soon, but we wanted to get the tool out there. We sincerely hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed making it

Of course, the site’s being hit so hard right now the links are down, if pwnage is what you seek, and you want to jailbreak and unlock 2.0 on your original iPhone 2G, or jailbreak your iPhone 3G (I don’t believe unlock is supported yet on the 3G but will be following soon), new mirrors, seeds, rapidshares, etc. should be popping up.

JAR!

The fine folks at iphone-dev want to make it clear: they’ve jailbroken the iPhone and they have the video above to prove it. Now all we need is a release announcement …and maybe confirmation that it will work on that rumored 2.01 release. On the first score, they let us know they’re hard at work. They must be — it’s clearly fried their taste in music — check the video above out for proof of both.

Thanks to Cherryhead25 for the tip!. [via]

JAR! Avast ye scurvy 2.0 firmware and prepare to be unlocked!

Didn’t take long, did it? Well, actually it did — the iPhoneDevTeam has been hax0ring away at it since the SDK went wide and Apple, in an attempt to woo legitimate developers, made the beta 2.0 firmware (all 8 versions of it), widely available.

Their latest, release version 2.0, Pwnage tool hasn’t gone public yet, but will soon. Are you willing to unlock? 22 countries are getting the iPhone tomorrow, and 50 more are following, but with Apple’s tight control of the SDK, my bet is there will still be a few folks out there who want to run anything they dang-well please on their iPhone.

What about you? Are you one of the crazy-ones, the pirates? Are you going to jailbreak/unlock?

Read

WinPwn, the Pwnage tool for Windows, has finally left beta and is now available for official release. WinPwn 1.0 claims to be much more stable than previous beta releases and includes many bug fixes and new features. WinPwn is an incredibly safe and powerful way of jailbreaking your iPhone. It can jailbreak any firmware and the folks over at Pwnage believe that it will eventually replace the likes of iLiberty+ and ZiPhone.

At its most basic level, WinPwn allows you to install custom firmware on your iPhone and restore with custom firmware through iTunes. Though there isn’t a true need for WinPwn and Pwnage for 1.1.4, it is the only current option to jailbreak 2.0. Also, the Pwnage tool is for those who like to dabble with new firmware, so those wary of more sophisticated measures of jailbreaking might want to stick with the other options for the time being.

We haven’t gotten our hands on WinPwn or the Pwnage tool here at TiPb just yet, but we’ll be sure to update you guys about the entire process when we do.

Read

Avast ye scurvy 2.0 firmware — prepare to be pwned! Erica Sadun of TUAW tells us the cartoon Jobs’ing, Russian slang’ing, custom firmware making, iTunes loading unlock solution has hit version 1.1:

The new tool allows you to add custom packages, logos and fixes EDGE settings under 1.1.4. Either pop over to iPhone-dev.org or choose PwnageTool > Check for Updates (Command-U) directly from the app.

But don’t raise the Jolly Roger too soon, rumors are also circulating that Cap’n Jobs is coming about hard, cannon’s loaded, and may just be upping the ante soon in the great unloack cat’n'mouse game.

Will Apple be able to hang the rascally pirates from the highest yard arm? Are the pirates too far ahead at this point? And how ironic is it that Jobs and co. once styled themselves as the pirates? What do you think?

We haven’t covered the latest in the hacking front here at Phone different for a few reasons:

1. Dieter was busy this week
2. Rene dare not fiddle with his unlocked iPhone let it get bricked and he not be able to use it up there in Canadaland
3. Chad, Brian, and Casey are not madmen, they like their iPhones just they way they are, thank you very much.

Anyhow, here’s the deal. If you’re on a Mac, you can now go download the iPhone Pwnage Tool¹. What does it do? Well, it’s a full-on way to load any firmware (i.e. version of the iPhone OS) you want, including versions not even made by Apple (should some such version arise). Supposedly this will be remarkably difficult for Apple to lock down in the future. Naturally, the firmware we all are interested in is the current Beta of the 2.0 firmware. I’ll be making this my weekend project, so stay tuned to see if I have a new 2.0 Hands-On or a new Paperweight Hands-On.

Engadget brings us this video (embedded below) of the action as well:

¹ That’s pronounced “Ownage,” if you’re wondering, as in “Hey n00b, I’m totally like, gonna like, pwn joo n00b.”