The newest model of the iPhone 3GS includes a change in the phone’s bootrom designed to keep hackers from using the usual entry points to unlock the popular Apple mobile device.

In the constantly moving brush war between Apple and iPhone hackers, the Cupertino maker of the iPhone appears to have won the most recent battle by making a change in the iPhone 3GS which will force the hackers that write programs to unlock the iPhone find another entry point to worm their way into the phone. Apple has managed to gain a (probably temporary) upper hand over those dedicated hackers via the release of a new bootrom, iBoot-359.3.2.  The phone’s firmware, which shipped on new iPhone 3GSs starting this week, closes previously used doors to exploits by the unlock hacker community, according to a DailyTech article.

Apple has tried many approaches, up to and including “bricking” unlocked iPhones, and also denying unlocked iPhones access to the iTunes store, all with the aim of halting the spread of iPhone unlocking in the U.S. in order to force people to use AT&T, even though the iPhone hardware is capable of working on other carriers such as T-Mobile. Generally, though, what Steve Jobs has called the game of cat and mouse between the hackers and Apple is won in the end by the hackers.

This is probably not a permanent end to the iPhone unlocking war. The hackers, such as the “iPhone Dev Team,” generally come up with new exploits fairly quickly after Apple has changed the target phone to block unlocking, sometimes in just days. The degree of difficulty in breaking into the new phone’s configuration will almost certainly be measured in terms of days or weeks, but likely will not be much longer than that and will define how much better Apple is getting at keeping the hackers out.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 5:51 pm under Firmware, Hacks, iPhone.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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