05 July 2007, 15:11

iPhone activation partially cracked

The Norwegian CSS and multiple iTunes DRM cracker Jon Lech Johansen has published on his blog a manual including software which gives instructions on how to persuade an unactivated iPhone without iTunes registration or AT&T contract to work. Admittedly, this does not allow calls to be made - the functions of the mobile telephone remain idle. But WLAN, iPod and other functions supposedly become available, which might possibly be entirely sufficient for some users.

In order to activate the functions, an instance of the activation server provided by Johansen must be installed under Windows (.NET 2.0 required) and requests to the Apple server albert.apple.com must be rerouted to the remote activation server by an entry in the hosts file. The activation server is also available in source code. During activation, the iPhone then makes contact with the local server instead of with iTunes. In addition, Johansen mentions three "magic iTunes numbers" in his registration that must be noted in certain offsets so that the activation functions. What that means exactly, he doesn't explain. As long as one doesn't understand the numbers, the activation won't function, he wrote in his blog. Even in the source code, the file server.cs seems to require a supplementation by the user, according to a comment in it.

Johansen's manual loosens yet another stone in the protective iPhone wall. Hackers have already cracked some iPhone passwords over the past days and even discovered first, possibly critical vulnerabilities.