I was a bit jealous of not having an iPhone for myself in Canada — since there is still not deal with Rogers and Apple — so I decided to buy one directly from the US ($400) and try to hack it.

A Mad World

The world of iPhone hacking is quite mad. Since every firmware release is harder than the previous one, you really have to learn how the iPhone internals works in order to understand something with the procedures.

There are tons of stuff to learn actually, from the strange acronyms (e.g.: BL, FM, BB, DFU, OTB), the various hacking software (e.g.: Jailbreak, iBrickr, iNdependence, ZiPhone), to the hackers name (e.g.: GeoHot, Zibris, iPhone Dev Team).

The 1.1.3 Challenge

The latest software revision of the iPhone is the 1.1.3 and it has proven to be quite difficult to break a brand new phone (i.e.: out of the box).

The phone I bought has the latest 1.1.3 built-in. I couldn’t break it even with all obscure manipulation out there. I had the chance to exchange it for a 1.0.2 (one of the first firmware) and break it, but the phone part was still not working.

Here Comes ZiPhone

Over the last couple of weeks, Zibris (one of the famous hackers) has worked days and nights to release ZiPhone — a software that combines various hacking methods and can fully break any version of the iPhone (up to 1.1.3) using a simple turnkey procedure.

iPhone displaying logs

Using ZiPhone, I was able to upgrade my iPhone to firmware 1.1.2 and unlock it quite easily — I’m still waiting before going to 1.1.3.

iPhone Unlocked

I can now use the iPhone without any limitations. I currently use a prepaid Rogers SIM card, so I don’t have access to the EDGE network and data services (only in Wi-Fi).

What About the Future?

Apple is about to release the SDK for the iPhone with a new software upgrade (i.e.: 1.1.4 or 2.0) that will certainly break all hacking methods known so far. Hackers will have to do the work all over again.

The cat and mouse game is about to continue.

UPDATE (26-02-08): The firmware update 1.1.4 has been released today. It seems to be an obscure bug fix release and nobody really knows what’s inside. However, early tests reveals that ZiPhone still work but it’s recommended to not upgrade.