Tonight There’s Gonna Be A Jailbreak
Posted by Phoenix Woman on March 3, 2008
How do you turn the iPhone or iPod touch into a truly smart phone or smart PDA? By jailbreaking the snot out of it, of course.
The latest of the easy exploits for 1.1.4 is here. Now if only Apple would provide a solar charger case for the thing, battery life wouldn’t be such an issue for those of us who like to surf the web.
UPDATE: It’s not a case for the iPhone, but it will charge it and pretty much anything else thanks to its multiplicity of attachments. All hail the solar FreeLoader!
Stormcrow said
Jesus god, the people who run Apple Computer are almost as arrogant as Republican pundits.
It is pretty close to a truism in information security that when you have unrestricted physical access to a device, you can own it anytime you summon enough determination.
“Physical security” is something they test for on the CISSP exam for a reason.
Stormcrow said
Almost completely OT .. but did you know that SystemRescueCD went to version 1.0 the other day?
PW, this is a Linux LiveCD that can literally save your computer. I’ve used it to do exactly that on several occasions, most memorably after a power failure last December that took out my Linux system’s motherboard and an outboard USB drive.
A couple of months prior, I used it to drag a Windows system back from the dead, because I had just about given up on the system drive. That boot drive wouldn’t boot …
It rocks during system install prep, if you want to lay out a pre-planned partition scheme.
It’ll also, for all intents and purposes, “Ghost” an entire hard drive or any partition thereof.
You can also use it to destroy data on a partition, effectively past the ability of ordinary forensic tools to recover it.
Charles II said
You may have found another customer, Stormcrow. I’ve lost one HD and one floppy disk (yes, I keep stuff working for a very long time) in the last months. Recovered the HD and working on the floppy. But there’s no legitimate reason for either failure.
Phoenix Woman said
Wow, thanks, Stormie! Will check it out.
The crippling of the iPhone/iTouch is a sop to AT&T. People need a really strong incentive to put up with the EDGE network.
Stormcrow said
Another lesson I learned – not the “hard way” or by any great leap of intelligence; it was just my dumb luck the first time.
If a hard disk apparently fails for electrical reasons, like an “ugly” power failure with a lot of “on-off-on” before the light go out, always suspect the “PCB”. That’s the printed circuit board that is “married” to the hard disk and carries it’s electronics package.
Here’s a picture of a 160GB Western Digital Caviar with the PCB exposed.
These are always mounted with just plain old screws (albeit wierdos that often will need a Torx head or somesuch), and are falling-off-a-log easy to change out.
You’ll need the entire model number of the suspect disk to be sure of getting the right PCB, and it’ll probably cost as much as a replacement drive would.
But when the PCB is the only failed component, the data on the physical disk is probably still there and still readable. Change out the PCB and you’re good to go. If the data is that important and it’s not stored anywhere else, go for it.
This saved my ass twice.
Once when the drive in question was the boot drive to my home SunOS system 15 years ago. That’s when I learned this. The last time was after that power failure two months ago. The disk in question was an outboard Caviar 250GB USB drive.
Phoenix Woman said
Hmmm… I wonder if my SD cards will work?