Apple’s Update Renders Hacked iPhones Unusable
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Apple makes good on its threat. The firmware update which has recently been implemented, obliterates any usage of unlocked iPhones and wipes out unauthorized applications off of the iPhone Mobile Operating System.
Users are reporting that a new update to Apple’s iPhone is making previously unlocked iPhones unusable…
The iPhone 1.1.1 update, which was released on Thursday, breaks iPhones that have been hacked so that they work with providers other than AT&T, the only U.S. provider Apple has allowed to carry its mobile phones.
In recent months, a number of software tools have been developed which allow iPhone users to break the cage of Apple’s AT&T-only restriction, but Apple has said that it would oppose any attempts to unlock the iPhone. Earlier this week the company released a warning that unlocked iPhones “will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.”
Shortly after the Thursday update was released, users of unlocked iPhones began reporting hundred of problems.
I spoke to a guy from the USA, who said that after the firmware update, the iPhone was stuck with an error message and was just simply unusable. “It kept saying ‘unsupported SIM card,’ even with the AT&T SIM card in it,” said Luke Tachi. “You can turn the phone off or on, but we just can’t figure out how to get past this ‘SIM card not supported’,” he said.
SIM cards contain account information and are used to verify devices on certain types of mobile networks. Unlocked iPhones prior to the update would have been able to use SIM cards from non-AT&T networks.
Biggest Update to Date
The update also appears to disable the “Jailbreak’” hack which allowed users to install unsupported software on their iPhones. The new software is Apple’s biggest iPhone update to date, and it fixes a number of security flaws in the mobile phone’s browser, mail client and Bluetooth networking server.
The majority of the flaws do not appear to be critical, but the update fixes a larger number of bugs than the first iPhone update which was released on July 31st of this year.
Fixing Of Flaws
Hackers have said that the iPhone’s browser and mail clients are the most likely sources of software flaws and this release bears that out. Apple have fixed seven flaws in the Safari browser, two in the iPhone’s mail client and one Bluetooth bug with the release.
Though there may be some technical limitations to what an attacker could do by exploiting this bug, it “could be a nasty remote exploit,” he added.
Mobile phone users typically cannot update their own software, but Apple introduced this capability in the iPhone, which uses the update mechanism in the phone’s iTunes music player.
iTunes checks for these updates once per week, so it may take up to seven days for all iPhone users to see these updates. Apple advises users to install the update immediately.
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Hi, just reading through your report:
Quote: “Mobile phone users typically cannot update their own software, but Apple introduced this capability in the iPhone, which uses the update mechanism in the phone’s iTunes music player.”
In recent years several phone manufacturers have offered this capability, providing user updates for their phones for example: Siemens, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices. Users have been able to download the updates online and apply them by connecting their handset to their computers.
Yes, but connecting your handset to your PC/Mac to download updates is not the same comparison to what the iPhone does. It’s a shame that Hacked iPhone’s are rendered pretty much useless huh.
Perhaps there is a way to Disable Firmware updates on the iPhone?