Apple Now Actively Taking A Stance Against Jailbreakers

For years people have been jailbreaking their iOS devices to run things that Apple won’t allow, whether it be apps or themes. They’ve never actively done a lot against the jailbreaking community, until now.

I’m due to take my iPhone into the Apple Store due to some hardware issues, but of course I was running a jailbroken iOS 4.3.2, so I spent 3 hours trying to restore it. It got stuck in a constant restore cycle. I tried using RecBoot, TinyUmbrella and iRecovery to try and get it out of it but it just wouldn’t work.

Turns out that Apple have now updated iTunes to check the hosts file on the computer and if there is an entry under ‘gs.apple.com’ it will put your device into a constant restore cycle. This is because some of the tools used for jailbreaking will add the ‘gs.apple.com’ entry to the hosts file to stop the local machine talking back to the server. Of course it’s simple to remove the entry and restore but for whose who don’t know about this will be stuck with a very expensive paperweight. It does rise some other issues, some people may have very large host files and therefore it will simply take too long and then iTunes will assume the device is jailbroken and put it into the constant recovery cycle.

Cycorder Repair Service [Updated]

If you’ve ever used Cycorder and got a call or you’ve ran out of memory during a video you know how annoying it is when you go to the video and it won’t play. No matter how hard you try it won’t play back. Some people simply give up, others pay quite a lot of money to a repair company.

I’ve done quite a few videos now and my service has been fully tested and worked 100% of the time. So if you have corrupted Cycorder videos you want fixed or know someone who does I will get them fixed and back to you within less than 1 hour after payment in most cases.

Here’s how it works:

Upload the video to WeTransfer (Up to 2GB)
Send the file to sbraidley [at] yahoo.co.uk (include any discount codes at this point).
I will then download and fix the file and email you with a quote of price and a screenshot of the video for proof if requested.
Send the payment via PayPal in your preffered currency, either USD or GBP and make sure that it’s sent as Personal Payment Owed.
Once payment is received I will immediately upload the file back to WeTransfer for you to download.
You now have your fixed video.

At the minute I’m charging a flat fee of $25/£15.60 per GB (The price is determined by the repaired video size and not the corrupt video that is sent). The video can be any length and sound is also processed with the video unlike some other services. I can also promise that you file will never been seen by anyone but you, videos are checked that the process has worked but this does not require the video to be played.

Apple Announces iOS 4.1

Apple announced iOS 4.1 which fixes many of the issues that were causing major issues, fixing the issues with the proximity sensor, Bluetooth and the iPhone 3G performance along with completely new features such as HDR camera mode. Also HD video uploads over WiFi, Game Center and TV show rentals. Look for the update to hit iTunes sometime next week as a free download for your iPhone or iPod touch.

Surik Creates Fix For PDF Security Issues

Surik, creator of the Cydia store has rolled out a patch that fixes PDF security issues that are fixed by the 4.0.2 update along with ones that Apple hasn’t fixed yet. Seems that if you want to be secure and protected the only thing to do is to jailbreak your device, escpailly if your running a first gen iPhone or iPod Touch. The package can be found in Cydia.

Cycorder Corrupt Video Repair Service

I tweeted it out yesterday but I’d like to inform you all that I have started a service which means you can get corrupted cycorder videos fixed very quickly and very cheaply.

If you’ve ever used Cycorder and got a call during a video you know how annoying it is when you go to the video and it won’t play. No matter how hard you try it won’t play back. Some people simply give up, others pay quite a lot of money to a repair company.

Today I come to you with the cheap alternative, it’s obviously early stages and I might start a website up and everything specifically for the service soon but for now it’s a referral based service. So if you have coruppted cycorder videos you want fixed or know someone who does I will get them fixed and back to you within less than 1 hour after payment in most cases.

Here’s how it works:

Upload the video to WeTransfer (Up to 2GB)
Send the file to sbraidley [at] yahoo.co.uk (I will set up a email address for it later but for now use that one)
I will then download and fix the file and email you with a quote of price and a screenshot of the video for proof if requested.
Send the payment via PayPal and once payment is received I will immediately upload the file back to WeTransfer for you to download.
You now have your fixed video.

At the minute this is just a small project I’m running to see how many people will be use the service. The pricing is very reasonable and official pricing will be announced later. If you want to get a quote before you send the file, email me at the address provided with the size of the file and I’ll get back to you. Also bulk pricing will be cheaper so if you have 10 videos you can get them all done at once for cheaper than separately. It is mainly aimed at cycorder videos but I might be able to fix any .mov file.

Note: Some videos have audio sync issues which I won’t fix as part of the service but it’s quite simple to do.

Spirit Released for iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad

The day has finally come, comex has released Spirit, the first userland jailbreak since the 1.x era. It runs on the latest iPhone OS firmwares (3.1.2, 3.1.3 and 3.2). Spirit is an untethered jailbreak which comes as great news to many 3rd generation iPod Touch & iPhone 3GS users who have the MC models who were stuck with a tethered jailbreak for months.

It works on all the iDevices but on the iPad, all this is still sort of beta. Some packages in Cydia, not designed for iPad, might screw up your system and require you to restore.

You can download it from SpiritJB.com

iPhone OS 4.0 Only For 3G and 3GS?

According to a source, the new iPhone OS 4.0, which is rumored to be shown at the upcoming Apple event; will include multitasking, which has been wanted for a long time but many iPhone users but only those who jailbreak the device can use this feature. The source also says there will be a new UI, “to make navigating through the OS easier and more efficient” and also OS-wise mutli-touch gestures. However I see it unlikely that Apple will majorly change the UI of the OS as they like to keep things familiar.

The source also says how they will also be “some brand new syncing ability for the contacts and calendar applications” but that the new OS will only be available for the iPhone 3G and 3GS, this makes sense for the multitasking as the iPhone 2G doesn’t have enough RAM to be able to multitask properly.

iPhone OS 4.0 To Have Contacts On The Home Screen?

Apple recently applied for a patent to put contacts on the iPhone home screen. The patent gives pretty solid evidence that the next iPhone OS iteration will include this feature.

The patent shows that the custom icons for contacts won’t just be for speed dialing but will be able to perform wide range of things, such as launching any app you specify that is personalized to the contact or display information about the contact.

One of the options has the icon for the contact that shows up on your home screen based on the persons proximity to you, so if someone gets within a certain range to you then they will show up on your home screen, however this will probably only work on iPhones or possibly phones that have GPS.

The icon can also be used to invoke one or more applications that are personalized to the contact. The icon can be modified to display information related to the contact. In one aspect, an icon associated with an entity can be temporarily displayed on the mobile device based on the proximity of the mobile device to the entity.

Hacker Sends Warning To iPhoneUnlockUK Customers

Customers who had used the controversial unlocking service, iPhoneUnlockUK.com recieved an unexpected email recently informing them that the company had been using unlicensed software and that their personal details, including email and physical addresses has been compromised.

The hackers had broken into the web server back in February, where they gained access to the personal information of several users who had illegally unlock their iPhone. The hacker sent emails that the software iPhoneUnlockUK was selling for profit had been stolen, suggesting the customers demand a refund from the fraudulent company. Some people might of thought the iPhone Dev Team, who put a huge amount of work into unlocking the iPhone could of been involved but the hacker made it clear that they were not.

The breach in February is the only one currently known, when the hackers copied the personal details of customers and defaced the website. Since then, iPhoneUnlockUK moved web hosts and claim they have not suffered any more attacks. No financial details were believed to have been compromised during the breach, as all the credit card transactions were handled by a third party company.

iPhone Security Issues Not Exclusive To Jailbroken Devices

In the past few months there have been multiple worms released into the wild that affected inadequately protected jailbroken iPhones. However a Swiss iPhone developer has published research that indicates that there are also security vulnerabilities affected un-jailbroken devices too. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise to most as it was only a matter of time.

The developer, Nicholas Seriot has created a proof of concept app called SpyPhone to demonstrate how Apple’s own APIs can be used to read and edit user’s address books, gain access to the user’s web surfing history or even recent location information. Although this is not as bad as what can be done with root permissions to the device, it can still effect users, especially when they think they are safe.

For the attacks to work, the application with the malicious code would need to get through the App Store approval system, however this wouldn’t be very hard as pointed out by many developers, as Apple doesn’t check source code but does have a kill switch on every app. The code would be delayed, so that it only beings to work so many weeks after the app is released or it could be an encrypted payload.

Nicholas Seriot detailed these possible iPhone privacy risks in a talk he delivered in Geneva, during which he also outlined possible defense strategies, suggesting that Apple should design the iPhone OS to require users to authorize read or read-write access by iPhone applications to potentially sensitive on-device information such as the Address Book, add firewall functionality to the device and ensure the keyboard cache is not as readily available to third-party applications.

Developers Research

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