iOS: Understanding JailBreak, Activation and Unlocking

We are talking about Apple's little gems, iPhone, iPod Touch e iPad now very widespread and in particular of everything related to the world iOS (the operating system adopted on the devices).

This post is not a tutorial or a how-to (there are thousands of them) but just a reference for those approaching thepiracy of a device Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), and they want to better understand what we are talking about when we use terms like jailbreak, activation, unlock, cydia, installer, ipa, baseband and find ideas to go deeper and clarify some legitimate doubts. All information was taken from the hackint0sh forum and the iPhone Dev Team site.

activation

It is essential to use the iPhone to deactivate the "emergency calls only" mode. After activation you will be able to access the trampoline (the “desktop” of the device, iPhone, iPod or iPad). On a phone where the jailbreak, it is possible to perform false authentication.

Unlocking (Unlock)

Usually this refers to the ability to unlock the "phone" part of the device. If the phone is locked and you are not using a valid SIM, the iPhone turns out to be an iPod Touch with Bluetooth, Camera and GPS. Unlocking it means modifying the Baseband to be able to use the SIM cards of any mobile phone operator. In Spain we do not have to worry, because ours iPhone (with or without subscription), they are sold already unlocked. NB Anyone who wants to unlock their foreign phone, purchased abroad, should check out the program. ultrasn0w and have the jailbreak (Not all basebands are currently supported...).

jailbreak

This term indicates full write access to the entire iOS file system. Normally it is possible to see only some folders, the multimedia ones, used by iTunes for music, videos, programs downloaded from the App Store, etc.; So we are in a sandbox (created with a chroot jail) and we don't have permission to write to all the other folders. He jailbreak makes sure to edit the /etc/fstab file on iPhone (and others) and enable writing to the entire file system. At the same time as the jailbreak is performed, activation occurs, which can therefore be done in a single step (at least this is what happened before redsn0w and jailbreakme). The fastest and safest method to jailbreak is the program. Development team called rojosn0w (available for Windows and MacOSX). Check out our latest guides if you want to jailbreak your device. iOS 4.3.3 jailbreak firmware. If you have an iPhone 3G, you should check firmware 4.2.1 (the latest available for the 3G version) and use the iOS 4.2.1 Jailbreak Firmware guide.

Baseband

Section of the iPhone that manages communications, functions that require the use of the antenna and the interface to the SIM card. The iPhone operating system sees this part of the phone as a resource to use and send instructions to the "phone" part. Unlocking the iPhone is done by modifying this section managed by a chip with its own RAM, chipset and flash memory. The main CPU is directly responsible for managing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communications.

stabbing

When we talk about pwnage, we are referring to the exploit (created by Development team) for the first versions of the firmware of the iPhone. The bug was in the device's boot process, which allowed unsigned code to be written to NOR Flash (32 MB) thanks to an iBoot modification or by directly patching the kernel. It is implemented in older versions of QuickPwn and PwanageTool (as well as ZiPhone). In this post we will not refer to this technique, considering that the problem has been corrected by Apple and it is not possible to exploit the exploit.

Pwnage 2.0

It's the ultimate exploit for anyone. firmware (even those to be released in the future) on iPhone 3G and early versions of iPod Touch. The exploit is performed using a hardware certificate parsing function that is vulnerable to stack overflow. It was possible to create an ad hoc certificate and use it to write code arbitrarily into memory. It's difficult to understand exactly how it works and the only certainty is that Apple changed the iPhone/iPod hardware to prevent the exploit. Other exploits are used in the latest versions of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

QuickPwn, PwanageHerramienta

These are implementations of the previous exploits. They make it possible jailbreak y L 'activation of the iPhone in an extremely simple way; All it takes is one click and a few step-by-step guided operations. The programs (always created by Development team) use a Custom firmware (Like a PSP to understand). For each new firmware released by Apple, there will be a new version of both applications. With the 2G versions of the iPhone, at the same time as the jailbreak They also perform unlocking. For iPhone 3G, unlock operation is not possible (yet). I remember that the problem does not arise for those who bought a factory unlocked iPhone 3G in Spain.

Cydia

It is THE program that is automatically loaded into the payload (or downloaded from the network) by exploits exploited by rojosn0w, jailbreak me, greenp0ison and are installed directly on the device iOS in the moment of jailbreak. They have repositories where all other programs that are not present in theApp Store from Apple and can be installed directly through the device.

IPA

Format for applications (programs, games) provided by iTunes. The latter allows the installation of IPA files on the iPhone using Sync. They are digitally signed by Apple.

Development team

Hacker group with no ties to Apple that discovered numerous bugs, implemented exploits, and "cracked" the iPhone. Everything that is possible with the iPhone today is (largely) thanks to this group. Almost all of his work was initially available only in binary form; A Google Code page was later created for free fonts published by the group.

Visit their blog for updates.

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