iPhone 3G Hacks Progress Report

Since Steve Jobs announced the launch of iPhone 3G during Apple's WWDC 08 event one of the most commonly asked question here at iPhone Hacks has been: Can the new iPhone 3G be hacked?

So here you go, checkout the progress report on iPhone 3G Hacks based on the information available to us so far.

Challenges facing the iPhone hacking community:

There have been comments that indicate that hacking iPhone firmware 2.0 (the software that will be running on iPhone 3G) will be not be easy like this one over at iPhone Atlas which told us that "The bootloader hardware exploit is now fixed." or this one over at Gizmodo which informed us that "Apple is preparing up to battle the hackers, with more and more code running signed and secured inside the iPhone."

What to expect from the iPhone hacking community?

The iPhone hacking community needs to come up with a way to hack iPhone firmware 2.0 so that you can jailbreak and unlock the iPhone or at least figure out a way to downgrade to iPhone firmware 1.1.4 which we all know can be easily hacked either with the Pwnage tool or Zibri's ZiPhone.

Though in my opinion, most iPhone owners will be waiting for the solution that will hack iPhone firmware 2.0 so that they can take advantage of the latest features in iPhone firmware 2.0 and at the same time also be able to install their favorite unofficial native iPhone apps and more importantly unlock the iPhone to be able to use SIMs of any carrier.

We have some news on the progress made by two of the most reliable sources: the iPhone Dev Team who brought the iPhone Pwnage tool and Zibri who has developed ZiPhone, one of easiest ways to hack, jailbreak and unlock the iPhone.

iPhone Dev Team:

To recap, the iPhone Pwnage tool was released by the iPhone dev team so that you can flash your iPhone with custom iPhone firmware to jailbreak it so that you can install and run any of your favorite native iPhone applications as well to activate and unlock your iPhone to use it in any compatible GSM networks.

The latest version of the PwnageTool includes support to pwn the pre-release version of iPhone firmware 2.0 that came bundled with iPhone SDK beta 3.

However, the last SDK update was iPhone SDK beta 8 which was released last week and as iPhone Hacks reader, JFA, had mentioned in the comments yesterday "2.0 (iPhone firmware 2.0) code signing is done even at the kernel level so running unauthorized apps will be a tougher cat & mouse chase from now on...".

We don't have an update if the iPhone Dev team has been able to hack the latest pre-release version of iPhone firmware 2.0 which has been bundled with iPhone SDK beta 8.

Zibri, the iPhone hacking legend:

Zibri is apparently working on a way to downgrade from iPhone firmware 2.0. Zibri had recently posted on his site informing us that "With the iPhone it's more complicated because you will also need to downgrade the baseband. I already have a very preliminary version of the new ZiPhone which will allow that."

It will be interesting to see if his downgrade method will work out-of-the-box (OOTB) 3G iPhones.

So to summarize, unfortunately we still don't have a confirmation that 3G iPhone can be hacked (to be fair its too early), however the iPhone hacking community seems to have done some ground work by trying out their methods with pre-release iPhone firmware and seem to be quite confident that they will stay ahead of this cat and mouse game.

As always you will be the first to know in case we get any updates on the 3G iPhone hacking front here, so stay tuned here at iPhone Hacks.

Thanks Bryon and JFA for sharing the info!

Update: You might want to read the comment by JFA below where he has shared some interesting details (Thanks JFA).

Breaking News: iPhone Firmware 2.0 Hacked, Jailbroken and Unlocked by the iPhone Dev Team

 

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