Where there is a walled garden, there’s a way: five day into the iPhone launch, hackers are busy trying to “unlock” the iPhone: meaning trying to find ways where it will function as at least and iPod+Wi-Fi tablet of sorts, without being locked in AT&T’s two year contract. At least four claims have come out, where you can activate the iPhone without going through AT&T, or another variation where you use AT&T to activate the phone, then cancel and use a pre-paid AT&T SIM to do a workaround.
— The first one, described by TUAW here, is pretty harmless…more a workaround than a hack.
— The second one, by Jon Lech Johansen, aka the fearless “DVD Jon”…he says he has found “a way to activate a brand new unactivated iPhone without giving any of your money or personal information to AT&T NSA.” The code is here, but only for the very technical minded.
— The third one is a collaborative effort, where they claim to have released a “proof of concept activation program for the iPhone” that makes it possible to activate the device without an AT&T account, or re-activate after an AT&T account has been terminated. More described in this BB post.
— The fourth one, from UK, where Belfast, U.K.-based Uniquephones says its engineers are working around the clock in several countries andare close to cracking the complex security system. They even have a site and a blog set up. The key to unlocking the phone is breaking the encryption process that protects the token sent through the iTunes activation process to an iPhone’s firmware, the company says.
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