Hackszine.com: iPhone Archives

Archive: iPhone

Page 3 of 6 << 1 2 3 4 5 6 >>

August 30, 2007

Scrollable iPhone Dock

Until now, you've needed to be selective about what applications are added to the iPhone's home screen. There are a lot of great 3rd party apps becoming available, but the OS doesn't have the ability to show more than 16 at a time on the home screen.

Nate True fixed this problem with Dock, an iPhone application that sits on top of the home screen and allows you to scroll through all of your installed applications. Slick.

Dock: iPhone mod to enable scrolling in the home screen - Link

August 29, 2007

iPhone accelerometer hacks

Erling Ellingsen figured out how to retrieve high sample rate measurements from the iPhone's built-in accelerometer:

As it turns out, the iPhone has a built-in LIS302DL, a tiny 3-axis accelerometer. While some have attempted to use it from within the Safari browser (the Tilt game detects changes to the width of the browser page; it is basically used as a 1-bit input device), its potential is still somewhat untapped.

He's posted the necessary source, so now you can get to work on your own motion-input applications.

iPhone accelerometer source code - Link

August 27, 2007

Apollo IM: AIM on the iPhone

The first version of a native AIM client for the iPhone was released today under the GPL2 license! It's based on the libFiretalk IM library, and it currently provides basic chat functionality. This snippet from their project page is interesting, though:

The overall direction of the project is to get libPurple compiled for the iPhone and move to it asap in order to provide more than AIM. Firetalk's old and unmaintained, while Purple has a community devoted to it.
The idea is to provide an "Adium" for the iPhone, and we're moving towards it.

Real IM is the killer app for this device, and it's stilla wonder to me that iChat wasn't included in the standard OS build. Perhaps this project will put some pressure on Apple to release an iPhone-based iChat in a future update.

Download Apollo IM (Zip) - Link
Apollo IM Project Page - Link

August 26, 2007

iPhone Apper

Jon Maddox made a nifty tool that let's you easily create web application bookmarks that dock on your iPhone's home screen.

Tired of going all the way to MobileSafari on your iPhone to use web apps that were built with the "sweet" iPhone SDK?
Provide iPhone Apper with a URL, name, and icon... and iPhone Apper will provide you with an application to install* onto your iPhone. A quick reboot, and your favorite and most visited web application is available from the home screen.

You provide the url, title and a png icon file and it will create the little application for copying to your iPhone's Applications folder. You can really only squeeze 16 icons on the home screen, so choose your web apps wisely.

iPhone Apper - Link

August 24, 2007

iPhone unlock howto posted

George Hotz spent his summer hacking the iPhone, blew a hole through the Apple/AT&T carrier restriction and has single-handedly put the positive form of the word "hacker" in more popular media channels than I've ever before seen. Excellent!

The hack is brilliant:

Here how the bootrom check works; it reads from 0xA0000030 0xA000A5A0 0xA0015C58 0xA0017370 and all these addresses must read as blank, or 0xFFFFFFFF. When you erase flash, it becoms 0xFFFFFFFF. But you can't erase those locations, because they are in the bootloader. So thats where the testpoint comes in. Pulling A17 high hardware OR's the address bus with 0x00040000(offset one because data bus is 16 bit) So the bootrom instead checks locations 0xA0040030 0xA004A5A0 0xA0045C58 0xA0047370, which are in the main firmware and can be erased.

You'll need to do a little tight soldering and get familiar with a hex editor. Engadget is reporting that there's a working, though not released, all-software tool that will accomplish the same, but George's hack can executed done today, and there's a full set of instructions on his blog.

Links:
New Jersey teen cracks iPhone network lock - [via Chris Hartgraves] Link
George Hotz' iPhone unlocking HOWTO - Link
Engadget verifies iPhone software unlock utility - Link
iPhone unlocked using SIM cloning - Link

Installer.app Beta for iPhone

Foo 1
Foo 0
It's never been easier to run all the hackey apps and games on your iPhone, just get Installer.app Beta and you're all set... - Link.

Related:
How To: Install Nintendo Games and Play With Tactile Feedback in Your iPhone - Link.

August 21, 2007

iPhone update

There's a new update for iPhones, it says "bug fixes"... it seems louder to me, but otherwise I'm not sure what changed.

August 6, 2007

iPhone unlocked using SIM cloning

It's not a consumer-friendly hack, but some of the uber hackers over on the hackint0sh forum have figured out a way to use other carrier's SIM cards in the iPhone using some SIM cloning techniques. The method was posted by a person claiming the device now completely works with service in Croatia.

Hopefully a reader who understands more about this stuff can correct me, but I'll take a pass at explaining how this works. First off, the SIM in your device is like a small computer. In addition to storing a small amount of data, it also contains a mechanism for performing a challenge-response sequence using an internal secret key, which is how the carrier detects if your SIM is a legitimate card and hasn't been tampered with. This key, referred to as Ki, cannot be read from the card, so the only way to obtain it is to get it from the carrier (not a chance), or by way of a brute force attack (takes 4 or 5 hours).

So, with the hack, you use some special hardware to extract the carrier information from your network's SIM and the AT&T SIM. You also brute force the Ki value for your SIM. Then, you program a new SIM with your carrier's data, as well as some atypical functionality. This special programming on your cloned SIM card returns the network identifier (IMSI) of the AT&T SIM for the first few tries, and then continues to function as your normal carrier's SIM. I'm presuming this is to trick the iPhone into accepting your card as an AT&T SIM during boot, but then switching back to the alternate SIM when it connects to the network.

Long story short, it's quite a lot of crud to have to wade through just to use a $600 phone in Vermont, Croatia, or anywhere else on the planet you desire to reside.

Here's a priceless snippet from an interview on VideoGamer.com:

VideoGamer: Do you think hackers have an unfairly bad reputation?

Deepdark: Listen, let's talk about the iPhone situation. Apple has 10000 employees and they are against us because we are bricking them by hacking their protection. On another side are end users who are 1,000,000 strong maybe. They are happy. So like you see, it's a big difference.

VideoGamer: But isn't it Apple's right to have their own protection on their products?

Deepdark: Yes, but you can't sell a car and then say to the buyer, "hey listen, you must drive 50kmh". It's so stupid.

...

VideoGamer: In the end do you think these projects actually make the iPhone more desirable to consumers?

Deepdark: Of course. We are making the product more useful. Imagine a world without hackers. You won't live in that world.

Amen to that.

References:
Tutorial: "Unlock" your iPhone with SuperSim - Link
iPhone fully unlocked using sim-cloning - Link
Subscriber Identity Module @ Wikipedia - Link

iPhone voice recorder utility

Snap1186347525
Erica made an iPhone voice recorder utility, wow! She writes -

I was pretty sure the capability was in there to begin with--after all, didn't the Steve promise us one back in the January Keynote? So that certainty made the class hunt go a little quicker.

When I returned home from the Apple Store Genius Bar with my new loaner, I put all that thought into code and this is what turned up: my newly written iPhone Voice Recorder utility. Yes, it is little more than a proof-of-concept but (a) it works, and (b) is the first step towards iPhone VOIP.

The recorder saves in Adaptive Multi-rate format (.amr files) that you can play back in QuickTime. I put them into the /tmp folder and tell you the name of the file when you finish your recording.

iPhone Voice Recorder Utility - Link.

August 5, 2007

First 3rd party native iPhone application

That was fast, the first 3rd party iPhone application is out, it's a terminal app, nicely done - round up here... Link.

Also worth mentioning - Erica (MAKE author, MAKE tech board) and TUAW blogger is doing amazing work with the unofficial Apple iPhone SDK:

iPhone screenshot utility - Link.
Journeys inside the iPhone's SDK - Link.
TUAW's iPhone hacks - Link.

July 31, 2007

iPhone update!

Here's the first iPhone update - just plunk your iPhone in the dock, start iTunes and have it check for an update in the iPhone panel...

So far it says "bug fixes". No new apps, nothing. My guess is that it's the fix for the Safari security issue that was/is being revealed at BlackHat-Defcon.

Update: Safari stuff, that's it - Link.

Here are the screenshots...

Make 866

Make 867

Make 868

Make 869

Make 870

Make 871

Make 872

July 30, 2007

iPhone tether: enable EDGE wireless on your laptop

Of all the applications you can upload to the iPhone thanks to the Jailbreak and iPhoneInterface hacks, a SOCKS proxy daemon is perhaps the most useful. It's also the best way to make full use of an unlimited data plan.

Recent developments have allowed iPhone hackers to compile background applications for the iPhone - among the most interesting so far is srelay, a SOCKS proxy server.

srelay running on your iPhone opens up a very exciting possibility - you can use your iPhone's EDGE connection with a laptop or other Wifi-enabled device.

This is about as essential as it gets for laptop users who regularly travel outside the range of reliable WiFi. When this is activated, you'll be able to browse the web on your laptop just about anywhere you can get a cell signal. Your laptop will connect to the iPhone over an adhoc WiFi network, and the SOCKS proxy will happly funnel your web requests over the iPhone's EDGE data connection.

I should also mention that this sort of functionality is a typical feature for just about every other phone on the market -- I've been doing this with my GPRS Windows Mobile phone for years -- so it's nice to see the iPhone finally get with the program.

Tether your iPhone: EDGE internet on your laptop - Link

July 24, 2007

HOWTO: ssh daemon on the iPhone

Erica Sadun at TUAW posted a slick reference for getting the Dropbear SSH server running on the iPhone:

Over at the #iphone channel at irc.osx86.hu, the thoroughly awesome NerveGas has figured out how to enable ssh on the iPhone without using restore mode. The secret lies in overwriting an existing binary and plist to trick the iPhone into calling chmod on the Dropbear ssh server and making it executable.
At this time, NerveGas has used Nightwatch's compiler to create iPhone-compatible versions of curl and ps as well as a number of other useful Unix utilities. (He's working on grep, as I write).

This hack will let you use scp to transfer files to your device, as well as allow you to access the unix shell from another machine. There's a working build toolchain now for the iPhone, so this is probably the most convenient way to upload and execute custom files on your iPhone from this point forward.

One other thing -- when you've finished installing, make sure to change the password from the default "dottie". From NerveGas' SSH guide:

If you don't like 'dottie', you can generate a new encrypted password by running:
perl -e 'print crypt("MYPASSWORD", "XU");'

Where MYPASSWORD is the new password you want, and XU is a random two-letter salt. Copy the encrypted output and replace the existing one in /etc/master.passwd on the phone.

You'll want to do this for the two enabled accounts 'root' and 'mobile'. Don't forget -- failure to change the default password is essentially giving everyone open access to your device.

References
TUAW's iPhone SSH Overview - Link
NerveGas' Instructions for Installing SSH - Link

July 22, 2007

iPhone buffer overflow exploit

Whoops. Looks like somone's found a buffer overflow exploit on the iPhone which allows arbitrary code to be executed as root. Details won't be released until the Blackhat convention in Vegas on August 2nd, but it looks like Safari is the culprit - [via] Link.

The exploit's authors suggest that you not use unfamilar WiFi networks, browse sites you don't trust, or open web links from emails until Apple releases a patch. So, basically, all the normal internet hygiene rules still apply -- people just aren't used to thinking that way about their phones yet. Add the risk of having your phone lost or stolen, and maybe you'll agree that it's just generally best not to keep too much sensitive/private data on portable devices.

Sharing lists of podcasts for the iPhone, iPod, iTunes... OPML, .pcasts and more...

I was talking with a friend who has an iPhone and was sharing some of the videos and audio (podcasts) I have. It's a pretty good mix of current news, updated videos, science audio shows and best of all, free... The audio shows are good for running and the video shows are good for commuting (subway/bus). Since I don't have a TV this is a nice commercial free way to get a lot of great content. Not many people know you can share your Podcasts fairly easily (by share I mean the list of them).

First, the not so easy ways... You can't make an iMix since that's just for things you can buy (see image below).

Make 844

Make 849
Here's a screen shot of the ones I have...

Make 848
In iTunes you can see the XML feed, but you can't copy and paste it.

Make 847
One thing that is possible is to drag the podcast title from iTunes on to the desktop, it creates a .pcast file (Podcast subscription file) which contains the feed location.

Make 846
It's possible to cut and paste from a .pcast file once you open it in a text editor - and you can paste the url in to iTunes... (*Note, you can also drag RSS/XML feeds in to iTunes from a browser). If you like the shows listed here - download my .pcast files linked below or all of them in the zip file - Link.

That said, the easiest way for folks really in to this is to just use an OPML file. iTunes can export and import OPML files (a list of locations / feeds of the podcasts, audio, video and PDF). Here's how...

Make 851
In iTunes click podcasts in the main window.