Last week we told you about our experiences vis-a-vis the iPhone and the latest hacks for sim unlocking. Since then things have changed and protections for iPhone have now been undone in large part by the famous Geohot. The latest hack lets you change the bootloader of the iPhone, ie the first piece of code that loads the the hardware drivers, the software that tells the iPhone what it is. The bootloader contains basic information on the iPhone, and these were exploited in its first draft, stamped 3.9. Apple has responded by offering a new bootloader, 4.6 in the latest equipment (roughly since the launch in England) , which removed these flaws and is relatively reliable. However, its reliability has also been compromised, at least in a certain way. A flaw has been found and allows easy reflashing of the iPhone to the previous bootloader (3.9)with the software Ziphone reflasher . This manipulation returns the iPhone to a much more malleable and fully transparent state. This is a hard blow for Apple, which is in the situation of having to try to change the keys while hackers have the means to change the locks. There is no doubt that their engineers are in the process to do everything possible to find ways to block changes to the bootloader. But it will be too late for the millions of phones already sold. Beware, however, if you decide to reflash the bootloader in your iPhone, because this manipulation is risky. Any crash during the modification can lead to permanent destruction of the phone! Of course, before you ask, we have tried ourselves. It all went smoothly and we had, in 5 minutes, an iPhone with bootloader 3.9, 1.1.3 firmware and "baseband" 04_03_13G desimlocked. [translation by jeremy]

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	www.hardmac.com/news/2008-02-22/#7832