Speakers at 25C3: iPhone Dev Team
Oh look! Cupcakes!
the Paris Hilton of mobile phones” in a recent market study: all buzz, no value. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that it also makes quite a challenge for hackers: maybe it’s not the Holy Grail, but definitely some Candy Mountain to conquer. Why hack it? Because it’s there! And because Apple doesn’t exactly make it easy to use that device in ways you as a hacker may want to use it, e.g. installing stuff that doesn’t come out of their application store or using it with a phone provider other than whoever is the monopolist in your jurisdiction.
Introductions to speakers on this blog usually tell you something about the people behind the name, their backgrounds, and how they look like. Well, this isn’t going to happen here. We know nothing about these guys(?) other than that they are awesome. Our contact with them started when we received an e-mail in response to our Call for Papers by planetbeing, MuscleNerd, and pytey:
This submission is on behalf of the “iPhone dev team”, an international group of individuals well-known for our efforts in jailbreaking and removing SIM carrier locks from Apple’s iPhone. Our efforts have been significant in making the widespread dissemination of the first generation iPhone possible (due to the limited numbers of official carriers) as well as making third-party applications possible on the iPhone, unlocking its true potential as a computing device. Although iPhone jailbreaking and unlocks are a significant way that hacking has affected the more mainstream, there has never before been a talk at a hacker conference describing the details of how it is actually done, and the various security vulnerabilities we discovered to make what we do possible. We think such a talk would be very interesting to the community.
You bet it would be very interesting to the community! We are happy to have this merry band of anonymous, yet famous hackers at 25C3, after they paid a visit to Chaos Communication Camp in 2007 as the official documentary shows. After all, these are the people who brought you the PwnageTool and QuickPwn. Even Woz likes their work. Oh, and there’s Linux, too.
Day 1, 20:30, Room 1, is the time and place to be for “Hacking the iPhone: Pwning Apple’s Mobile Internet Device“. We have no idea what will happen. We just know it’s going to be great.
While we’re at it: Should you have a jailbroken iPhone, you may want to have a look at the configuration. Let’s just say that many people know about the ssh Daemon with the standard login “root” and password “alpine”. You might want to change that. We understand that at other tech conferences this may be a theoretical problem, but trust us: the Congress is different. Secure your toys!