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.

Apple Patent For Location Sharing

Location Sharing is one of latest technologies recently released into the mainstream by Google in the form of Latitude, last year Google tried to put the application on the iPhone but Apple rejected the app, maybe this patent shows the reasoning behind that.

Apple’s method of location sharing involves sending SMS messages between phones. The message would be encoded in such a way that the phone can then extract your current location. Locating sharing is only part of the package — another patent titled ‘position fix indicator’ focuses on ways of displaying the user’s location, and the location of people that you’re connected with.

The diagram also seems to suggest a forward-facing camera, something that was speculated for the iPhone 3GS but turned out false, perhaps meaning the iPhone 4G will have this feature. It’s possible the diagram is just a placeholder (it looks identical to the one used in other patents), but it could be indicative of a forward-facing camera in the iPhone 4G arriving later this year.

Vodafone UK To Offer iPhone January 14th

Orange & Tesco Mobile are soon to be joined by Vodafone as one the iPhone carriers in the UK. They have announced that the iPhone will be on their networking starting January 14th.

The plans start at £30 a month for 24 months, with additional handset charges ranging from £59 (iPhone 3G 8GB) to £239 (3GS 32GB). However, if you sign onto a £35 a month contract for 24 months the 8GB iPhone 3G is free.

Unlike Orange, O2 and Tesco Mobile; Vodafone don’t appear to be offering a Pay As You Go option for its customers.

There has been some concerns whether or not the network would be able to handle the major increase in traffic, but Guy Laurence, chief executive of Vodafone UK, says the company has been preparing for the launch for over a year, strengthening their infrastructure for the release.

Apple To Announce New iPhone At The End Of June?

AppleInsider have noticed that The Moscone Center Calendar lists a “Corporate Event” from June 28th to July 2nd2010. Previous Apple events have been listed in the same name and the conference is usually used to introduce new iPhone models.

If the new iPhone is released in June/July then it would keep to the usual iPhone release cycle and would seem to fit the same release pattern of when the new iPhone model is tested. As the iPhone 3GS was tested 8 months prior to release and a reference to the iPhone3,1 has been found recently so this would fit the same pattern.

N64 Emulator Released For iPhone 3GS & iPod Touch 3G

ZodTTD today released his N64 emulator for the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3G, a while before expected. A 14-year-old developer had begun work on a N64 emulator, slated for release in Spring but ZodTTD beat him to it.

It is a port of mupen64plus along with Ari64’s ARM Dynarec, and Adventus / Orkin’s OpenGLES GPU. Since the graphics processing unit (GPU) code is written with the OpenGL ES 2.0 specification, it limits the devices able to be used to the iPhone 3gs and iPod Touch 3rd Gen as of the current Apple lineup.

The current version sports:

Support for the Wii Remote via Bluetooth;
Emulation dynarec fast CPU;
Emulation of sound;
Download the ROM of games from the same;
Using Open GL libraries | ES 2.0;
Supports ROM:. N64 and. Z64 and archives. Zip and. Gz

n64iPhone is available now from Cydia.

Apple Testing iPhone OS 3.1.3 and 4.0

It’s possible that Apple could be testing the iPhone OS version 3.1.3 and version 4.0, which we assume would run on the new iPhone3,1 device being currently tested. The rumours have come from server logs showing the new versions of the OS.

The BoyGeniusReport found evidence of two new user agents in their log files. The first, iPhone OS 3.1.3 would be a minor bug fix. The second, iPhone OS 4.0 would be a significant upgrade to the operating system.

The user agents could be faked, but it’s likely by now that Apple are testing these versions of the OS.

iPhone 3GS Coming To Tesco Mobile December 14th

As I spoke about before, Tesco said how they were hoping to release the iPhone 3GS before Christmas. Now the date has been set for December 14th, just in time for Christmas. Tesco gave some further details on their offerings of the iPhone. It has free unlimited 3G (fair use policy applies) and BT Openzone WiFi access, which is free for a year to Pay As You Go customers and for the life of your contract if your on Pay Monthly, the same as O2 offers.

The cheapest contract is £20 per month for their one-year contract, but that gets you only £60 calls and texts allowance and you have to pay £320 for the 16GB device itself. They also offer an unlimited calls and texts plan for £60 per month, cheaper than what Orange offer. Last of all they offer half-price calling to your favourite five numbers. The Pay As You Go costs will be the same as what O2 and Orange offer.

N64 iPhone Emulator Coming in Spring 2010

A N64 Emulator is the works for the iPhone 3GS and 3rd generation iPod Touch. The emulator called 3G4 has been created by a 14-year-old boy. This could be the first native N64 emulator for the iPhone, however ZodTTD has been working on an emulator for some time, but unfortunately we haven’t heard any news in a long time.

There are of course the usual problems with any project in development such as “duplicate button registers, delay of presses, and crashes when heavy gameplay occurs. ”

The emulator has an expected release of Spring 2010, according to the developer.

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

iPhone 3,1 In Testing?

The developer of the public transportation guide for San Francisco, iBART. Has spotted an iPhone3,1 user in their log files. This is similar to when the 3GS was spotted before it was announced by the device string in log files.

“iPhone3,1” was first spotted in Pandav’s usage logs in November. The identifier “iPhone3,1” does not match any shipping iPhones. The last iPhone released was the iPhone 3GS which carries the identification string “iPhone2,1”.

If the reports are correct the next iPhone should be around in about 8 months, if the cycle is the same as before.

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