A hacker in the Netherlands broke into some jailbroken iPhones and sent text messages to the owners asking them to pay to find out how to secure their phones, according to postings in a Dutch forum called Tweakers.net.
One of the victims posted a screenshot from his iPhone of the SMS received. It said: "Your iPhone's been hacked because it's really insecure! Please visit doiop.com/iHacked and secure your iPhone right now! Right now, I can access all your files."
The URL provided now displays a message indicating that it was reported for spam or phishing abuse and has been deactivated.
Ars Technica reports that before the page was removed, it asked that victims send 5 euros ($7.36) to a PayPal account and then await an e-mail with instructions on how to secure the phone. The fix probably would involve restoring the factory settings, according to the Ars Technica post.
"If you don't pay, it's fine by me," the hacker's page said. "But remember, the way I got access to your iPhone can be used by thousands of others--they can send text messages from your number (like I did), use it to call or record your calls, and actually whatever they want, even use it for their hacking activities! I can assure you, I have no intention of harming you or whatever, but, some hackers do! It's just my advice to secure your phone."
... Read moreAccording to Outdustry, iTunes gift cards have been pirated, and China's biggest C2C online shopping site, Taobao, is the platform used to sell the cards.
(Credit:
Taobao)
Chinese hackers have figured out a way to generate iTunes gift card keycode numbers and help themselves to songs from Apple's music store. The hackers have been selling pirated $200 iTunes gift cards on Taobao for as little as 17.9 RMB, or just $2.60--a savings of almost 99 percent!
... Read more
An unlocked iPhone 3G appears to be closer to reality.
Just two days after Apple released its iPhone 2.2 update, the iPhone Dev Team has released a so-called jailbreak of the firmware.
An easy way of unlocking your iPhone 3G could hit the Internet relatively soon.
(Credit: CNET)The team of hackers on Saturday posted to its blog QuickPwn for 2.2 and PwnageTool for 2.2 for Windows and Macintosh machines, along with instructions on how enable iPhone 3Gs with the 2.2 firmware to accept third-party applications.
The blog also includes a word of caution about baseband, the chip that controls the connection between the phone and the mobile-phone network:
Think of it like a cable modem or other peripheral that is attached to your home PC that needs occasional updates. When a software update is released and presented to you within iTunes, the baseband is sometimes updated (to fix bugs or add new features). The 2.2 update for the iPhone 3G contains such an update, so running the vanilla updater straight away with iTunes will reprogram and update the baseband. This could be bad for certain people, depending on your ultimate aim.
The iPhone Dev Team is still working to unlock the iPhone 3G, but it has proven a tough nut to crack, mostly because of the baseband technology. You can unlock your iPhone 3G to use it on another carrier by modifying the SIM card, but what the iPhone Dev Team is trying to accomplish is a software-based unlock that you would just download and install.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:59 a.m. PDT.
Steve Jobs made it official Wednesday morning: third-party applications are coming to the iPhone.
Apple's CEO posted another of his open letters to the world Wednesday on Apple's Hot News section of its Web site, confirming reports that a software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone will be released to developers next year. It's coming in February, rather than January as reported, but application developers and iPhone owners will probably be able to wait the extra month.
"We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users," Jobs wrote. "It will take until February to release an SDK because we're trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once--provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc."
It always made sense for Apple to go down this road, since it was never going to win a hacking war and users clearly want third-party applications on their iPhones and iPod Touches, which will also be opened up by the SDK, Jobs confirmed. I actually thought it would take a little longer for Apple to open its precious iPhone up to developers, but the company probably has become more satisfied in recent months with the stability of the OS X operating system. Apple has always said that the iPhone runs Mac OS X at its core, but in practical terms it's really a new operating system that Apple has put together for the iPhone with common DNA from Mac OS.
Jobs implied that the first iPhone SDK would be a step past what Nokia is doing with its developers. Nokia has a huge developer community that creates applications for both Java and Symbian-based phones, and Jobs said those
"While this makes such a phone less than 'totally open,' we believe it is a step in the right direction," he wrote, hinting that Apple would somehow make it possible for almost any developer to add trusted applications to the iPhone using the SDK.
We'll have to see how Apple decides to strike a balance between openness and security, but it's good to see the company acknowledge that there are more options for keeping the iPhone secure than just
A 13-year-old hacker claims to have developed code that would let you put third-party applications on an iPod Touch without having to take a computer science class.
A simple iPod Touch jailbreak program is out that apparently lets you install third-party applications.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)
AriX sent us a press release Sunday promoting iJailbreak, an automated program that allows third-party applications to run on the iPod Touch. It doesn't work for the iPhone, and it's only available for iPod Touch owners who are using Intel-based Macs. I don't have an iPod Touch at my disposal right now, so I'm unable to test whether it actually works, but some users on MacRumors.com reported that it worked.
Ever since Apple released the 1.1.1 software update for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch in late September that broke older third-party application installers, hackers have been hard at work searching for a new way to bypass the restrictions. A preliminary jailbreaking application was released last week, but it required a great deal of expertise to get up and running. Erica Sadun, a writer for The Unofficial Apple Weblog, installed that iPod Touch jailbreak Friday evening but warned, "This is not ready for prime time, kids. Don't do this at home."
The iJailbreak program, however, is apparently designed for those who would like to put other applications on their iPod Touch but aren't crack coders. According to the press release, "the only user interaction required for iJailBreak to work is to restart the iPod Touch using the button on the top of the iPod. The application does the rest." AriX said he spent about nine hours writing a program in AppleScript that automatically does the scripting required to install the update released last week.He said there's a slight risk that the program could "brick" your iPod Touch, but it's pretty easy to restore an iPod Touch to the factory settings if something goes wrong. As we noted last week, we don't link to these kinds of programs, but it's called iJailBreak. That's iJailBreak. One more time, in case you missed it, iJailBreak.
If you've successfully installed this program, or if you can't get it to work, let us know in the comments below or drop me an e-mail at tom dot krazit at cnet dot com.
From time to time, I'll post a brief summary of some interesting items I come across during the day that I don't have time to call out in more detail. If you see anything interesting out there, drop me a line at tom dot krazit at cnet dot com. Take that, you e-mail harvesters.
LEGAL DEPARTMENT: There's some news about a couple of items that will soon await new Apple General Counsel Daniel Cooperman. Information Week notes that the company has been sued over the iPhone--again--this time by a man claiming that Apple is breaking the law by locking the iPhone to AT&T's network. And AppleInsider spotted Apple's name among defendants in a patent case that appears to claim that companies distributing content with DRM technology are violating patents held by an outfit called Digital Reg.
HACKING DEPARTMENT: Erica Sadun at The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports on the progress of the iPhone Dev Team in coming up with a hack for the latest software update to the iPhone, hoping to once again "jailbreak" the iPhone so outside applications can be run on the device. They've made some progress, but it still sounds like there's a way to go before third-party applications can once again be installed.
IPOD DEPARTMENT: New iPod Nano and iPod Classic owners were sent a software update over the weekend, according to Macrumors.com, that fixed a few bugs and improved the Cover Flow method of navigating through album covers. Apparently it also fixes the video-out on the iPod Nanos but now requires an Apple-approved video cord to watch videos on anything but the small 2-inch screen. Macworld also takes a look at the iPod Nano as a gaming device.
INTEL DEPARTMENT: The Inquirer thinks that Apple is calling shotgun on early shipments of Intel's quad-core Penryn processors for new Mac Pros or other unspecified "mainstream" systems. The chips are supposed to be out next month, which could hint at new Mac Pros using the Xeon version of Penryn that could be introduced at Macworld. I'm not sure what the mainstream systems are that would use a quad-core desktop chip, since the new iMacs use dual-core Intel chips, but perhaps they've figured out a way to put a quad-core Penryn in an iMac.
- prev
- 1
- next
