Seems like “Jody Sanders” of the West Midlands, UK (who we mentioned in our release post) is at it again and is stealing our work and passing it off as his own, he has done this before and this scam was reported by the Guardian and also by on this blog last year and was also covered in a very very long thread over at hackint0sh forums.

We specifically restrict the commercial use of our software, and yellowsn0w is included in these restrictions. This dodgy geezer is selling our software to you at a bargain £19.99 he says:-

“We can now fully unlock the iPhone 3G for use on any GSM network for just £19.99 DIY (£49.99 in-store at either London or Birmingham) - just in time for the release of the iPhone 3G PAYG in the UK (available from Carphone Warehouse and o2).”

Jody’s “software” contains our code and also copyrighted code from elsewhere. All you need is free and outlined here . What he is doing just isn’t cool.

If you are in Birmingham or London then if you could find out any information about Jody Sanders at “iph*neunl*ckuk” we’d be very appreciative.

Also if there are any UK based lawyers or student lawyers that could help us with this, then please contact us at blog@iphone-dev.org of course student lawyers can’t give us specific legal advice, but even your informal opinion helps.

Seems like even though Jody claims he doesn’t offer our software, he is offering his “own software” (that is fact just QuickPwn with some edits, also forbidden) and also claims (in relation to yellowsn0w) -

“Please bear with us at the moment - the software is in beta stage and we are trying to get it working for all users.”

The patched QuickPwn isn’t the only warez they sell or offer, they also provide a hacked version of the Apple IOUSBFamily kernel extension.

Some interesting stuff has been uncovered about Jody, some which can’t be posted here, but his limited company “Phone Unlock Limited” is way behind on submitting the company accounts, if anyone would like details of his company it can be read here - 1, 2, 3 and 4

Seems like selling our work has paid off, his current apartment (not the one listed in the companies house records) is up for sale for £190,000 - looks like he is moving onto a bigger and better things. We also need information on his co-worker “Tim Hinton” also of the West Midlands.

There are also other companies who are operating the same scam, but Jody has been warned specifically, so he is first (two wrongs don’t make a right).

Please don’t comment in this post about yellowsn0w issues, non Jody related comments will be deleted, if you are having problems with yellowsn0w, please comment here

Cute youtube video by nrox653 :)

Hello all,

We wish you a very happy, healthy, and hopeful 2009!

Once you have installed yellowsn0w, please report your success or failure here. it’ll help us with the bug fixes.

We have released the 0.9.5 beta yellowsn0w 3G unlock application, 0.9.5 beta should fix quite a few problems including some STK issues . Please remember to add feedback -> here <- as we can get useful feedback that will help us. We suggest that everyone upgrade to this version.

Please note the following:

BASICS

• The unlock works exclusively with baseband 02.28.00. This baseband is provided by the latest firmware update (2.2) from Apple.  You’ll need to upgrade to this release using iTunes and then use QuickPwn to activate etc. There are plenty of tutorials about this on iclarified, bigboss, modmi and other established tutorial sites.  Because it works on 02.28.00, it is available to everyone on the planet.  This means we don’t need to unnecessarily expose holes in earlier basebands, which is an important concern.
• The application is a small daemon that is launched on boot.  It injects the payload at boot and also whenever there is a baseband reset.  You won’t notice anything about it other than that your third-party sim now works.  It’s a small program and unobtrusive.  There is no GUI (this is by design).
• You can add the application using the sources outlined below. There are Cydia and Installer sources available, so use whichever you are comfortable using.
• yellowsn0w is completely removable through Cydia, the command line, and iTunes.

DETAILS

• There is a known issue with SIM cards that have STK (SIM Toolkit) application menus.  These menus are usually items such as “top up” “get credit” “lotto numbers” etc. These menu items confuse the application sometimes.  Removing and reinserting the SIM once after reboot (give it about 10 secs 60 seconds (with v0.9.1) after you see the slide to unlock widget) fixes this issue.  We’re working on a better fix.  Update: version 0.9.4 fixes this for many (but probably not all) users who previously had to wait a minute and then replug the sim.
• For those of you using SIM cards without STK menus, the application has some optional arguments that will make the unlock much faster for you.  So either experiment on your own (use “yellowsn0w -h” for usage) or wait for a customization writeup.
• After you install yellowsn0w via Cydia, you should return to the Cydia main menu then reboot your iPhone with the 3rd party SIM installed.  Wait for the slide to unlock screen, then wait 10 or 15 secs more.   If you don’t see your carrier name pop up, then remove your SIM, reinsert it, and wait 10 secs more.  This is the step we’ll be working on eliminating next.

RANDOM

• The application is version 0.9.5  This is considered beta software, you use it at your own risk. You know the score.
• The application is released on a non-commerical basis.  Please do not accept pirates and scummy ripoffs of this software. We license this software for single use and in a non-commerical environment (meaning you can’t charge for it). The techniques and methods used are not to be used by third party companies. We are watching you Jody…we won’t be so forgiving this time.
• Direct linking to the repository URLs is prohibited, please only link to this post. We will be checking referers.
• Happy 2009 and enjoy!

The iPhone 3G is used all over the world with all sorts of SIM cards, and we almost certainly will see untested and unexpected situations.  If the soft unlock doesn’t work for you on day 1 (literally day 1, of 2009!) then please don’t panic or be impatient.  This is new territory for everyone, so enjoy the ride as much as you can :)

RELEASE INFO

• Cydia source: http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com/
• Installer repo: http://i.yellowsn0w.com/

UPDATES

1. Soon you’ll see yellowsn0w 0.9.1 in the repos.  It uses a much longer delay to let your SIM card initialize.  If you have problems with 0.9.0, try this one and wait a full minute after you see homescreen, then reinsert sim card.  We need both success and failure reports to tune this across the world, so please be patient (but please also report result!) As of v 0.9.4 there’s no longer a one-minute delay step.  If you don’t see your carrier when your homescreen comes up, you may still need a sim reinsert (for now).
2. If you are in the U.S. and are trying this with T-Mobile, you must turn off the 3G switch in Settings.  Also if you are good with the command line, you can make it much easier by adding the line -q right after the /usr/bin/yellowsn0w line in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.iphone-dev.yellowsn0w.plist  (that’s and advanced tip, hopefully someone will make a boosprefs type of tool for it) The -q option is now deprecated in 0.9.4+ (it’s now always in quick mode, unless you use the -l option for long mode).
3. No PIN support yet. Remember how we said this was beta?  Well we’re still working out the flow for SIMs with PINs enabled.  Please disable any PIN you may have on that SIM before trying yellowsn0w, for now.
4. The unlock will silently quit on anything other than baseband 02.28.00. It detects the wrong version and just quits to avoid any damage.  Please double check your Modem Firmware setting in Settings->General->About.
5. For ankle-biters that are pointlessly reversing the application the source is here all open, but remember Jody, we are watching you.
6. Thanks for the kind words Stephen

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Update 1: yellowsn0w isn’t released yet. Don’t  wastekeypresses and valuable drinking time searching repos or the web for it ;-) as soon as it is released we’ll announce the details here :-)

Update 2: What do we have here then??

Update 3:  Now to explain the above screenshot.  The soft unlock has undergone many changes in the last two days.  The most significant one: the soft unlock will now be only for baseband 02.28.00 (the most recent baseband).  Yes we’ve been advising everyone to avoid updating their basebands, and in general that will always be the best policy.  Not every baseband version is guaranteed to have a hole through which we can inject the unlock. 

Update 4: (a) The yellowsn0w Cydia package will be available as soon as our devteam member in charge of the repo wakes up to fix a file permission error.  (b) Once it’s out, those users with SIMs that have apps and other menus on them will need to do that extra step we’ve been talking about.  They’ll need to pull and reinsert the SIM once after rebooting the phone to engage the unlock.  Even though it’s needed only once per boot, it’s still a nuisance and we’ll be fixing that ASAP.  (c) You’ll know if you fall into that “extra step” category if your carrier doesn’t show up within about 10 seconds of the slide to unlock screen.  (d) Yes it really is for baseband 02.28.00.  That means everyone can use it now! (e) Happy New Year!

The iPhone Dev team had the pleasure of joining forces tonight with Team Twiizers — the guys behind http://hackmii.com — in a spirited game of Capture the Flag.    The joint team was called WiiPhonies, and the contest lasted 8 hours.   There were over two dozen teams competing.

WiiPhonies won :)

The following is a visualization of the WiiPhonies progress throughout the night.  The performance of the teams in each of the categories is also available as well as the list of advisories that were submitted during the game.

But the statistics don’t convey the fun back-and-forth between all the teams throughout the whole night…so congratulations to everyone :)