News tagged ‘Firmware’

Geohot, the famous iPhone hacker and the creator of different jailbreak and unlock utilities (purplera1n, blackra1n and blacksn0w), is now working on a new jailbreak utility. It will support untethered jailbreak for all devices with the latest bootrom and the latest firmware. This includes iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3G.

Here is what Geohot writes in his blog:

The jailbreak is all software based, and is as simple to use as blackra1n. It is completely untethered, works on all current tethered models(ipt2, 3gs, ipt3), and will probably work on iPad too.

Don't ask about a release date. You won't make it happen any sooner.

It is still unclear if he used one of the recent iPhone Safari hacks to gain control of the device or if this is something else.

Here is a teaser video:

Recently MuscleNerd, the member of DevTeam, reported the presence of an interesting security bug in Safari for the iPhone. It will probably allow a quick remote jailbreak of iPhone or iPod Touch simply by connecting the device to an external website created for this purpose.

The bug was discovered by two hackers Ralph Phillip and Vincenzo Iozzo, who won the prize of $15 000 during CanSecWest. Their initial idea was to use a web portal to do the exploit of the SMS database and retrieve it's content.

A shop in Istanbul, Turkey has posted a video demonstration of how they perform a 'hardware unlock' on the iPhone 3G with firmware 3.1.3 and new baseband. The video shows ElektroPower performing a hardware teardown to reflash the Baseband to 04.26. Nice!

The BlackSn0w Unlock utility by Geohot has been updated by MSFTGuy and PushFix to work with the latest firmware 3.1.3. However it works only with baseband 05.11.07 (!!!).

This modified version of BlackSn0w works for iPhones upgraded with PwnageTool or Sn0wbreeze, preserving the baseband version 05.11.07. Users who have updated to OS 3.1.3 by any other method have the 05.12.01 baseband so BlackSn0w and UltraSn0w will not work.

This new version of BlackSn0w will be very useful for iPhone 3GS OS 3.1.3 / Baseband 05.11.07 users who can’t downgrade to earlier versions but still need unlock.

According to iHackintosh, this new version also fixes a small bug making WiFi much more stable.

Blacksn0w RC2 will be available on ModMyi repo soon. If you don't want to wait just add the source http://cydia.pushfix.info/ to Cydia and install it now.

Important: Blacksn0w for 3.1.3 is still in RC stage and there may be some issues or bugs. This is not an official update performed by Geohot, who has clearly indicated that he will not be updating any tools for the 3.1.3 firmware.

A UK user wrote an email to Steve Jobs asking about Picasa Albums on the Apple iPad. Steve Jobs answered. However instead of just telling him that Apple (obviously) wouldn't support Google's Picasa library format, Jobs writes that iPhoto has a "much better Faces and Places features" than Picasa.

Here is the header infomation below and yes Steve Jobs is still using the old 3.1.2 firmware.

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iH8sn0w has just released a new version of Sn0wbreeze, the Windows tool that allows you to jailbreak Firmware 3.1.3. This is a small update that fixes a problem that occurs only on 64bit operating system.

You can download the new sn0wbreeze 1.5.2 here.

We still recommend to use DevTeam utilities - RedSn0w (Windows and MAC OS) and PwnageTool (MAC OS only).

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:

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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.

Macrumors found interesting information in the latest Beta 3 iPad SDK. Apple's private framework which controls the camera, has 3 additional camera characteristics that are not found in the iPhone 3.x SDK:

It looks like Apple built in API support to test if your iPad had a Front Facing Camera, Zoom and a Camera Flash. The front facing camera could be used for video chat, while Zoom and Camera Flash are often requested features for the iPhone's back camera.

9to5Mac made further investigation and found the following icons which clearly show an interface to accept or decline a video chat:

The size of these buttons show that they will be used on the the iPad's screen rather than the iPhone.

It is still unknown, if these new features will be available in the first version of iPad. We hope to see them in future versions of the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Yesterday Apple released new firmware and new SDK. Today 9to5Mac has posted an interesting video walkthrough of the Photos app from the latest iPad SDK (iPhone OS 3.2 Beta 3). Take a look:

Apple released the third beta of the iPhone 3.2 SDK for iPad. There are no official reports on what changes are included in the update. Here are several screenshots: the newly included Photos app and the Camera tab in the same application:

Rumors that iPad could have a camera have been around for a while. These new photos might be one more evidence.However the iPad has a USB interface for camera and SD card reader, so this might just be the interface for importing pictures.

Update: According to MacRumors Apple pulled the Beta 3 release shortly after its initial release due to a major bug.

Update2: It's back.

Update3:

• iPad SDK 3.2 Beta 3 Photos.app video walk-through
• iPad SDK adds ability to set home screen wallpaper
• Front Camera, Flash, Zoom and Video Conferencing found in latest SDK

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.

There are so many iPhone 4G concepts created by different our users. Some show futuristic devices that are hard to create, while others are closer to reality.

Today we have an interesting concept designed by Francesco Maisano. It shows iPhone with more rounded design than the current one. We can also see some implementation of the future Firmware 4.0 - a special SpringBoard with Widgets for weather, calendar and clock. As for hardware there is a front camera, a flash for main camera, an intelligent Home button and much more. Take a look:

iH8sn0w, through a new tweet, informs that his new utility f0recast will be released tonight.

There are many different iPhone and iPod Touch models and firmware versions for them. Each device has it's own bootrom, bootloader, iBoot and baseband versions that determine if user can perform jailbreak and unlock. So it is quite complicated for users to answer a simple question: "Is my device jailbreakable?". f0recast will solve this problem.

f0recast is a small Windows application that will able to give a straight answer if the iPhone or iPod touch is able to be jailbroken. Just connect your iPhone, launch the app and push a button.

f0recast is only an informational tool which determines if your device can or cannot be jailbreaked. It will NOT jailbreak your device.

According to 9to5Mac it seems that Apple will present the new Firmware 4.0 on a new event scheduled for March 14, 2010. The news were received from a reliable source, but this is still rumors. Previously Apple was expected to release firmware 3.2 in March-April and firmware 4.0 some time in July. We'll see!