Let it Ra1n, Let it Sn0w on my iPhone

Filed under: gadgets, iphone, mobile network operators, mobile phones, security, software - 04 Nov 2009 18:39

Ok, I was suckered into something I said I wouldn’t do: I actually jaikbroke and unlocked my iPhone. George Hotz, a.k.a. geohot make it so easy with blackra1n. It was a super easy process to do, and if you do a restore, your iPhone is back to its Steve Jobs approved state.

For the most part, I don’t want a jailbroken phone. However, Apple (or is it AT&T?) doesn’t permit the iPhone to be unlocked in the United States. I don’t need that often, but it is handy when I am traveling, which I have done quite a bit lately.

One other thing I can certainly use is the ability to tether, which AT&T still doesn’t officially support. However the blacksn0w also enables the IPCC “hack” that allowed you to download a provisioning file that enables tethering (i.e. using your iPhone as a modem). That’s also useful when traveling, particularly if there isn’t an iPass-compatible WiFi hotspot nearby.

There’s a part of me that feels uneasy about this. Geohot and others like him are finding and exploiting security vulnerabilities in the iPhone to inject code into the phone to make it do things Apple didn’t want you to do. Whereas we usually hear about the “bad” results of security vulnerabilities–and these exploits could be seriously bad in the wrong hands–this actually gives the user more functionality.

Apple will, of course, study these jailbreak tools and find a way to close the security holes they take advantage of. Typical in the game of cat-and-mouse between vendor and hacker. Of course, if Apple had more customer-friendly policies related to unlocking the device and allowing installation of “unapproved” apps, this problem would mostly go away.

Apple could be using these “hackers” to make their phone as secure as possible. Once Apple believe the phones are invulnerable to these kinds of attacks, they could simply provide easy access to device unlock and allow people to install whatever apps they want. People get the functionality they want with a much more secure device to boot. Everyone wins.

That’s just a crackpot theory, of course, and I’m probably wrong about it. I hope I’m not.

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5 Comments

  1. Comment by tom

    if apple wanted to be secure they would open source the core baseband and USB communications modules so that ‘anyone’ could take a look at the code and pinpoint and make public the vulnerabilities for quick fixing.

  2. Comment by PhoneBoy

    Apple open-sourcing stuff? Hardly seems like them, but a valid point none the less.

  3. Comment by Stuart

    It seems to be getting simpler rather than more difficult. Re security — the user is making this choice. It is not like I’m walking around an my phone is being breached. The same type of “update” is available for Nokia’s and other phones too. Just the market for those with iPhones is much bigger. It interesting to me that I didn’t even need cydia this time and the “slowness” that my phone ended up with on other jailbreaks / unlocks doesn’t seem to have manifested itself at this point.

  4. Comment by PhoneBoy

    The user is making the choice, and in this case, you need physical access to the phone in order to exploit it. The risk is, therefore, not widespread.

    The last time I did this jailbreak (I didn’t unlock it before), I pretty quickly restored the phone back to a Steve Jobs approved state because it wasn’t booting. This was a fairly painless and quick process and yes, didn’t require Cydia. geohot made this extremely easy!

  5. Comment by tom

    yes blackra1n is by far the simplest jailbreak/unlock yet. it also makes possible to unlock and than delete blackra1n without installing cydia. this is more appealing to many who only want an unlock and could get confused by the whole jailbreak thing. i have stooped jailbreaking/unlocking for other though. i have found that people who do not perform there own jailbreak.unlock are near guaranteed to end up re-locked after an update. this upsets many of my friends who expect me as ‘the geek/hacker in the crowd’ to do things like unlock their phones for them.

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