iPhoneRoot.com

This week Steve Jobs answered an email question from Sweden. The question was from Jezper Söderlund:

I’ll keep it short.

I’m Jezper from Sweden, a long time Apple fan, currently about to replace the very last computer at home with a brand spanking new iMac i7. I’m also awaiting the release of the iPad. However, I have one question:

Will the wifi-only version somehow support tethering thru my iPhone?

Two devices, based on the same OS, with already built-in technology to share one data plan suggests a secondary contract could possibly be redundant.

From the look of your keynote, where the iPad sits well between my MacBook Pro and my iPhone, I was hoping the three of them could interact as seamless as possible.

All the best,
Jezper Söderlund

This is a very interesting question, since iPad’s network settings with tethering were found recently. Here is Jobs’ answer:

Read the rest of this entry »

What firmware version do you expect Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, to use on his iPhone? Probably something like 3.2 beta or 4.0 beta with many new unannounced features.

Mike from Macsoda got a response from Steve Jobs to his email wondering about the future of Final Cut Pro (40 Final Cut Pro developers were recently let go). Typically brief, Steve Jobs said:

No worries. FCP is alive and well.
Sent from my iPhone

Now let’s look at the header information from the email as well:

The email looks legit as it originates from an internal Apple 17.x.x.x IP address. Here is an interesting part: Steve Jobs iPhone is listed as iPhone Mail (7D11) which means he’s using firmware 3.1.2. That’s not even the current version of the iPhone OS (3.1.3 – 7E18), let alone the 4.0 Beta we’re were hoping to see.

A few days ago in an IRC channel the DevTeam and GeoHot discussed and summarized the state of the exploits found in the new baseband 05.12.01 in firmware 3.1.3. GeoHot explains that an exploit that had previously discovered and used in blacksn0w is still present in the new firmware released by Apple. It appears that both he and MuscleNerd are working on the same exploit, and if this were true, it would be a really good start to team up and release a new unlock tool.

Here is their discussion:

< visnet_ > What does geohot tweet mean?
< %geohot > its my bb exploit for safekeeping
< %Par4doX > geohot: did you turn that over to the dev team or are you doing something with it?
< %geohot > my days of turning things over are done
< %geohot > i hope its different from the one they have
< %geohot > but they prob already have it
< %geohot > its the one i orig wanted to release blacksn0w with
< %Par4doX > it’s still there in the new bb
< %geohot > yep, just checked
< %geohot > but then opted to use xemn since it was public
< Evan > Oo, it carries over from 05.11 to 05.12?
< %geohot > why wouldn’t it, apple doesn’t fix things proactivly
< @MuscleNerd > geohot we prob should figure out a way to know if we have same exploit double blind, otherwise we may release 2 different ones at same time
< %geohot > any suggestions?
< @MuscleNerd > not sure how to do that without making it easy to brute force tho
< %geohot > yea, i salted the hash
< @MuscleNerd > yeah
< @MuscleNerd > hmm maybe if we both hash the stack dump
< @Confucious > Can you two take this out of public sight?
< @MuscleNerd > the stack itself, not the header before it or the registers after it
< Her > muscle: any notice about the exploits are the same ?
< %geohot > we are working on it
< %geohot > cryptography, perfect for people who don’t trust each other

We should not expect much for the firmware 3.1.3 since the rumors predict the firmware 3.2 for mid-March. However these news are really good for owners of locked devices.

GeoHot recently posted a small message on twitter. He actually responds to many users who continue to ask him about the ability to run firmware 3.1.3 jailbreak using Blackra1n.

GeoHot has always been a bit reluctant to release new versions for various minor firmware updates. His advice is in fact once again to keep firmware 3.1.2, because the latest one does not have anything interesting.

GeoHot will be certainly back on the scene with the next release of firmware 3.2 in March / April or firmware 4.0 that is expected in July.

iH8sn0w released a new version of Sn0wbreeze, the Windows tool that allows to jailbreak the newest firmware 3.1.3. This is a small update that addresses several problems with YouTube.

You can download the new version of sn0wbreeze from here.

We still recommend to use DevTeam utilities – redsn0w (Windows and MAC OS) and pwnagetool (MAC OS only).

Fuzzyband is an application that can downgrade the baseband for iPhone 3G. Recently it has been updated to include the support for firmware 3.1.3 baseband 05.12.01. It works only with bootloader 05.08 (early iPhone 3G).

Why do users need to downgrade the baseband? The answer is simple: if they accidentally upgraded the new firmware and need to run unlock software (blacksn0w and ultrasn0w). Unlocked iPhones do not need Fuzzyband. iPhone 3GS users cannot downgrade baseband with Fuzzyband.

Fuzzyband is available for jailbreaked iPhones in Cydia (repository BigBoss, category “System” ).

Sherif Hashim has discovered an exploit which may allow unlock of the latest iPhone OS 3.1.3 baseband 05.12.01. Such unlock utilities for previous baseband versions were called blacksn0w, ultrasn0w и and yellowsn0w. MuscleNerd, the member of DevTeam, has already confirmed it is working. So the timing of the unlcok release is totally up to them right now.

Here is an official update from DevTeam:

“We’ve started to look at his crash but it’s a long road between any given crash and a fully working unlock, and we couldn’t put an ETA on it even if we wanted to. It’s not even guaranteed that an working unlock will come from this particular crash — it’s just too early to tell.”

According to the statistics just 14% of iPhone users have updated the firmware to version 3.1.3.

In particular 72.3% are still using firmware 3.1.2, less than 1% – firmware 3.1.1 and 4.6% have previous versions yet. The reasons for this are probably from the fact that 3.1.3 is only a minor update. Another reason could be the uncertainty of the jailbreak.

The iPhone Dev-Team has released PwnageTool 3.1.5 for Mac OS X. It allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to safely upgrade to firmware 3.1.3. With PwnageTool you can preserve jailbreak and ultrasn0w unlock. But if you’re using the blacksn0w unlock with baseband 05.11.07 you will need to stay at firmware 3.1.2.

PwnageTool 3.1.5 creates a custom 3.1.3 IPSW for the following devices:

• iPhone 2G
• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3GS with early bootrom
• iPod touch 1G
• iPod touch 2G with early bootrom

Warning! Don’t try to use this tool if you have  iPhone 3GS with firmware 3.1.3 – it just won’t work. If you have iPod Touch 1G, iPhone 2G or factory unlocked iPhone 3G , try to use redsn0w – is would be much easier.

You can download PwnageTool 3.1.5. here.

H8sn0w has just released the new version of Sn0wbreeze 1.4. Sn0wbreeze is a jailbreak utility with functionality similar to PwnageTool. The new version supports firmware 3.1.3 jailbreak for the following devices:

• iPhone 2G
• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3GS – old bootrom
• iPod Touch 1G
• iPod Touch 2G – non MC

Sn0wbreeze is a Windows application, so Mac users have to wait for the upcoming release of PwnageTool by the DevTeam. Alternatively, both Mac and Windows users can use Redsn0w to run jailbreak (no custom firmware though).

You can download the new version of sn0wbreeze here.

MuscleNerd continues to argue that we should not use sn0wbreeze. Especially users who have unlocked their iPhone with blacksn0w utility:

MuscleNerd, a member of the DevTeam, posted an interesting tweet. He claims that a new version of PwnageTool to jailbreak the Firmware 3.1.3 will be released soon.

However he also warns the owners of an iPhone 3G or 3GS, suggesting not rush for firmware update. In other words, the improvements of firmware 3.1.3 are minimal, so if you are comfortable with firmware 3.1.2 just stay with that.

iPhone hacker Geohot, who created popular utilities blackra1n (jailbreak) and blacksn0w (unlock), posted a message on twitter about the new firmware 3.1.3 released by Apple:

Hopefully some vulnerability in the new firmware will be found.

DevTeam released redsn0w 0.9.4. The updated utility is able to jailbreak the newest firmware 3.1.3.

Here is the list of supported devices:

• iPhone 2G
• iPhone 3G (only unlocked ones)
• iPod Touch 1G
• iPod Touch 2G (old versions,  serial number does NOT start with “MC”)

There is no unlock for firmware 3.1.3, so be careful. Redsn0w 0.9.4 doesn’t support iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3G and new versions of iPod Touch 2G.

You can download redsn0w 0.9.4 here.

Apple has just released new firmware 3.1.3 (7E18) for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPhone 2G, iPod touch, iPod touch 2G and iPod touch 3G.

The update includes:

• Improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS
• Resolves issue where third-party apps would not launch in some instances
• Fixes bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard
• Other security updates (more info)

So this is a minor update, which fixing only the accuracy of the 3GS battery meter and the stability of some third-party app launches. This update is avaliable via iTunes.

New firmware 3.1.3 also introduces a new version of the baseband, the 05.12.01. So if you need unlock do not update! DevTeam also warns us:

If you care about your jailbreak and unlock, don’t update your device – 3G and 3G(S) owners should pay particular attention to this warning.
PwnageTool and redsn0w are not yet compatible with 3.1.3

Experimenters show that the latest version of redsn0w 0.9.2 is able to jailbreak iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and iPod touch 1G. Just point it at the 3.1.2 IPSW (download here) after doing update or restore to firmware 3.1.3. Sounds like DevTeam will release an updated version of redsn0w that will handle firmware 3.1.3 officially. They say iPod touch 2G with firmware 3.1.3 is also jailbreakable.

Users report that unlock software, blacksn0w and ultrasn0w, doesn;t work with the new baseband.

Redsn0w is a cross-platform jailbreaking tool for iPhone and iPod Touch. New version redsn0w 0.9.2 supports the latest firmware 3.1.2.

redsn0w 0.9.2 supports:

• All iPhones and iPod touches
• Windows and Mac OSX (x86)
• Apple firmwares 3.0 and 3.1.2

We expect to see Linux version quite soon.

If you need a carrier unlock, redsn0w will handle iPhone 2G by itself (by installing the BootNeuter utility). For the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS use Cydia after you’re jailbroken to install ultrasn0w (baseband 04.26) or blacksn0w (baseband 05.11).

If you have a late-model iPhone 3GS, or if you have an iPod touch 2G whose serial number begins with “MC” (newer than week 40 of last year), or any iPod touch 3G, you can use redsn0w to jailbreak but you are currently restricted to “tethered” rebooting. That means you need to connect your device to a computer each time you boot it – so just try no to reboot.

You can download the latest version of redsn0w here.