A short history lesson
Skip to the iphone story if you're short on time
I unlocked my iPhone again today, after the iPhone DevTeam came out with another wonderful way to "jailbreak" and unlock it. When I read the story about how they cracked the iPhone this time, I actually found it hilarious, to the point where I decided to blog about it, trying to keep it in layman's terms. Maybe my friends can laugh with me without understanding the fine technical details.
When I was young I wanted to be a hacker. Hacking into my bank's computer system and pumping my balance up sounded so much easier than actually having to work for money. So I read about what "hacking" is what hackers are, and surprisingly, one of the first sentences I read in a few different sources was "hacking is good, not evil". I got a lengthy explanation on the difference between hackers and crackers and how the very basic quality of a hacker is that whatever they do, they do it to improve things and not to harm anything or anyone. I believe this is true, especially in the case of the iPhone hackers, who are not looking for fame (they're anonymous) or fortune (they refuse to take donations).
Enter the iPhone DevTeam. A bunch of folks, people don't know who they are, who decided one day that Apple is being unfair by making everyone take "their way or the highway". So they "jailbroke" the iphone, and made it into a better device - one that is open and can work exactly how its owner wants it to, without having to go through Apple's approval. Then they also unlocked it and made it usable on any GSM network, and not just AT&T. By that I'm pretty sure they didn't only help the people, they also helped Apple. I bought my first iPhone only because I knew I can use it anywhere in the world. The hackers helped Apple increase sales and footprint.
For some mysterious reason Apple has been after those hackers since day 1. They are constantly patching the holes that the hackers use to make the iPhone a more usable device. There's a cat and mouse game between the hackers and apple that has been going on for years now. And the last story of how the hacked the iPhone AGAIN after OS 4.2.1 was released by apple is quite funny.
The story
It started off with Apple closing all known holes, making it quite hard for the hackers to allow people to use their phone outside of the intended network (AT&T in the states). Seems like the hackers got a look into the newly released operating system, and said "kudos, apple, this is going to take a while". So they thought "how can we still help all these poor people who happen to have bought a phone recently and are locked in the unlockable OS?". You see the problem is, Apple wouldn't let you downgrade your phone. Once you have the version 4.1 installed, you cannot go back to version 4.0 or 3.2. You can only go up the version number scale. This means that while there is no known hack for version 4.1, you are pretty much stuck in the locked state.
Well, I guess suddenly someone remembered that the iPad (not iPhone) actually has operating systems starting with the number 6. Not only that, but the iPad actually has a known hack. So what they did was, instead of creating a hack for version 4.2.1, they created a hack that takes bits and pieces from version 06.15 (the ipad version), including the version number itself, merges into any iphone version, creating a mongrel that looks like it has the number 06.15, but is actually an iphone OS that can be unlocked. While installing this on the iPhone, the iPhone does not reject the new operating system, because it checks and sees that 06.15 is greater than 4, or 4.2. Problem solved, and Apple can (again) kick themselves in the head while thousands of iPhone users got control of their device again.
Surely the next iphone version will explicitly make sure that it is not taking the iPad OS in the back door...
Tom won again, and Jerry is looking for new ways to catch him.
Tom won again, and Jerry is looking for new ways to catch him.
