News tagged ‘hack’

It's amazing, how curious some people are. iPhone hacker and data-forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski explained that iPhone snaps a screenshot of your most recent action -- regardless of whether it's sending a text message, e-mailing or browsing a web page -- in order to cache it. This is purely for aesthetic purposes: When an iPhone user taps the Home button, the window of the application you have open shrinks and disappears. In order to create that shrinking effect, the iPhone snaps a screenshot, Zdziarski said.

The phone presumably deletes the image after you close the application. But anyone who understands data is aware that in most cases, deletion does not permanently remove files from a storage device. Zdziarski demonstrated that if you know what you're doing (and you've got over an hour), you can recover the file system and see many, many of these grabs.

"This flaw can only be exploited by somebody with physical access to a device, but your phone could get into the hands of someone with more malicious intent," he said. "Obviously, you don't want to trust any of your data to a passcode."

Gadget Lab is also reporting that Zdziarski said forensics experts have actually used this method to solve serious crimes.

via gizmodo and gadget lab

Here is some negative feedback on 2.0.1.

• A small number of blog readers and Apple-support forum participants have reported the update bricked their handsets or killed Wi-Fi functionality. Didn't show up during testing by many labs.
• There are several reports that updating to 2.0.1 on an iPhone in Airplane mode may result in bricked phones.
• Users who paid Vodaphone to unlock their phones for international roaming have reported the update breaks connections with their carriers.
• A few users report occasional lag in the Contacts, SMS and e-mail apps. From our testing, typing in the Contacts app is still laggy, but SMS and e-mail is faster.
• No surprise whatsoever: Updating results in losing access to your jailbroken (i.e. hacked) apps. 2.0.1 updates iPhone 3G's baseband, you may never be able to unlock the handset again if you run this update.
• Many users are reporting 2.0.1 is slow with backup. This more likely has to do with the version of iTunes they're running; many have said iTunes 7.7.1 sped up backup and syncing.

Related posts:

• Installing 2.0.1. Solving problems. Avoid bricked phone.
• New firmware 2.0.1

It is similar to the previous one. Same idea. The slim chip-and-circuit gizmo hugs the rear of your SIM and messes with the signals that go between it and the iPhone (or, indeed, a large number of other GSM and 3G phones) in a way that unlocks the device. Brando's product still requires you to cut your SIM to make room for the chip aboard it, but it looks a fairly simple operation. Costs just $21.

Today, Cydia got a nice face-lift and some nice new features. When you enter the “manage” page you will be given choices between mananging your packages and managing your sources. Manageing sources does not mean that you can add old installer sources. You still must have a valid apt source for Cydia.

It is now possible to edit which packages you do and do not want to see. Cydia comes up and asks you for your preferences at start to ask you which “role” you play:

• If you are a user and you do not want to see all the console applications, select “user”.  “User” is similar to the level that most installer users are familiar with since installer did not contain a lot of development / hacking packages.
• Hacker displays the GUI apps as well as command line apps used in SSH or terminal.
• “Developer” will filter out nothing, showing you everything. Many “users” may find some of these packages annoying. This is why you now have a choice!

You can later change this selection by going into “manage” and clicking on “settings”.

In addition, you can filter on “sections” (these are Categories in Installer). You can just tap the “edit” button on top of the “sections” page. If you tap that you will see this screen that lets you enable / disable various sections. Very cool, indeed.

More screenshots:

Read the rest of this entry »

This application was quite popular. It allows to modify look and feal of your Iphone: icons, slider icon, battery indicator, wi-fi/gsm indicators, dock, keyboard, chat, sounds and mcuh more.

What's new:

• Theme Browser: you can download them directly from this application, no ssh as before.;
• Elements of themes can be used partially (just sounds, foe example);
• User themes can be downloaded through the web site.

Install through Cydia. Source: Hack&Dev Team Source.

via iphoneapps

Apple's Fairplay DRM, which protects all the applications you download from iTunes, has been hacked. The method for hacking this has actually been around for a while, but has been recently applied to Super Monkey Ball and distributed into the wild. To do this, you'll need a jailbroken iPhone and SSH installed (to transfer the game and to fiddle with permissions). The theory is a bit techy and complex, but the execution isn't too insane. iPhone developers are disappointed about this

DevTeam posted a new interesting screenshot. They successfully downgraded modem firmware. This is not an unlock (yet), but it is a good illustration of the first progress made with regard to hacking the 3G baseband. They accomplished this by being able to execute their own code on the baseband that allows to circumvent security checks and flash the baseband with older, disallowed firmware. Please note this has been accomplished using software only, the iPhone 3G has not been disassembled or hardware modified in any way.

Yesterday there was a release of PWNage 2.0. Now version 2.0.1 is avaliable.

Here is the list of bugfixes:

• It auto-finds the bl39 and bl46 files better, if they’re on your computer
• It creates the ~/Library/iTunes/Device Support/ folder if not present, which should help with some 1600 errors people have been having.
• Many people have reported the PwnageTool not starting up at all (the icon never stops bouncing). This issue should be resolved now.
• The Sparkle AppCast URL is fixed in this version, so automatic updates should work for future releases.

Because of the AppCast URL fix, we recommend that everyone who downloaded PwnageTool 2.0 get this version, if they want to stay up to date automatically.

If PwnageTool 2.0 pwned your phone correctly the first time, you do not need to pwn again with 2.0.1.

The file can be found on BigBoss_’s repository, or at Hackint0sh.

If you choose to download it from other mirrors, you may want to verify that the SHA1 of the file is 10b6c7dc22286e7b70c3d5a92cda7d117426fda9.