The New iPhone 3.0. Update – Unlock and Jailbreak…Windows…2G/3G/3GS

Its been a really long time since I last posted here. But I feel it’s my duty to keep the ‘Underground Community’ informed about the information I have access to. Personally, I feel that the ‘Underground’ has lost its true meaning, its sense of presence – after 3 WordPress bans and removing of  ‘Objectionable’ Content on the blog. I still believe that V1 i.e. this blog is a better way to communicate with the community rather than V2 as this blog is better known. Also, I feel that this ‘ban’ has limited my potential in terms of a writer here.

iPhone 3.0 Explained

Now to move on to the topic for which this post was actually written. I’m sure that most of you have heard of the new 3.0 update from Apple to the iPhone; and the subsequent release 3.0.1. If you have not, then let me give you a brief expansion:

The iPhone 3.0 update came out with the iPhone 3GS on June 17, 2009. It can be compared to the Windows 7 release: much awaited features were added which increased stability and enchanced user experiece. Apple finally incorporated many of the features we asked for 🙂 Among them, some are:

1. Copy and Paste Text
2. Copy and Paste Photos
3. Search Spotlight – Search your iPhone for anything
4. Search in mail, Calendar and iPod
5. Landscape Keyboard in SMS, Mail and Notes
6. Multimedia Messaging or MMS
7. Support for new Calendar types
8. Improved Stocks Application
9. Connect iPhones/iTouches with bluetooth
10. Notes syncing with iTunes

[Gadget Hack] Upgrade Your Linksys Router (or Equivalent) to Tomato Firmware

Revisions:

7-25-09:  Initial release.

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In today’s day and age, just about every one is using a wireless router in their house.  The dominant router is the Linksys variation, as shown above.  Did you know that you can flash your Linksys router and upgrade it to a custom Linux firmware called Tomato?

Why would I want to do this?

The Linksys router with factory defaults is pretty limited in terms of its functionality.  By updating the firmware to use Tomato, you will have everything that you can do on the original Linksys router firmware, but you can do more!  I don’t know all the specifics, but you can do things such as:

• Schedule when the Internet can be on during certain times of the day
• Throttle bandwidth for specific applications
• Determine what applications receive what part of the bandwidth priority
• Increase the transmit power of the router
• Enable WPA, WPA2 encryption
• Turn the router into a bridge
  

and more!  Honestly, you are taking a $60 router, and converting it into a router that costs as high as $600 developed by Cisco. Ok, maybe not that high, but its pretty good!

To really learn more about Tomato, you can visit the makers website Polarcloud.  Here is the link to their FAQs here.

How to Jailbreak the iPod Touch 2G [2.2.1]

Hey guys.

So if you own an iPod Touch 2G (i’ll be lazy and might write touch), never fear, the jailbreak is finally here!

Ok, that’s not strictly true. The jailbreak has been around for awhile, but it was the tethered version, which required you to connect your touch to the computer every time you wanted to reboot.

A few days ago, someone was finally able to crack the final layer and make it such that you don’t need to tether the touch anymore. A few hours later, a program called QuickFreedom was built as a GUI to allow jailbreak.

All you will need is:

-QuickFreedom

-iPod Touch 2.2.1 firmware, which you can download online, through iTunes, or through QuickFreedom itself.

-LIBUSB (which you can install through QuickFreedom)

-an iPod Touch 2G (obviously.)

QuickFreedom works in a 5 step process, it’s actually not too hard to do.

Step 1:

You can download and install all the software you need from QuickFreedom, just make sure to refresh or restart the program when you do that so you can go onward, otherwise you will be stuck here.

Step 2:

Select your options and create a custom firmware. You can save it wherever you want, and you can add a custom bootscreen as well. When I did this, I didn’t use a custom bootscreen, but it should work fine.

Step 3:

This is the pre jailbreak. This was the hardest step for me, I don’t really know why. The whole trick is to get the touch into DFU mode. You can follow the DFU instructions, but it seemed almost impossible to use that, so I just ended up doing the DFU in various ways until I got it. I left iTunes open for the entire process, so you can use it as a check to see if you are doing it properly. It is my guess that QuickFreedom does not detect the DFU perfectly everytime since it told me that I was in DFU but would not let me proceed. Keep at it, you’ll eventually get there.

Here what I finally did at the end. It doesn’t matter if the iPod is on or off.
To do the DFU, hold the Power and Home buttons down for 10 seconds.
After 10 seconds, release the Power button and continue holding the Home button for 8 to 10 more seconds. At some point, iTunes should find an iPod in recovery mode unless you disconnected the iPod. I orginally tried doing this by turning off first, but in the end, I’m not too sure if that really mattered because my touch was in some limbo state between going on and off.

After you DFU, start the pre-jailbreak. WAIT. This is a mistake I almost made and got really lucky on. The log is there to help you, so read it! Do not go onward until you read that the patch was installed correctly. I almost started the next step before the patch was completely installed, this might screw things up, so just be careful.

Step 4:

Using iTunes, install the new software firmware that you built. Hold SHIFT and click Restore in iTunes, and find the custom firmware you built. Let the software install. It might take some time.

Step 5:

You are done! The touch should be jailbroken with Cydia and Installer. Have fun!

Some interesting notes:

I was not able to install more than 9 full pages of apps. I think that’s the limit. At 16 apps per page, thats 144 + 4 (from the dock) to total at 148. I haven’t tested this out, but you can probably use categories from Cydia to put all the apps in folders and get around this. Apps will still be there, but they are hidden away and will only appear if there is some more space (aka deleting old apps).

Thanks to the guys who made QuickFreedom and for http://proudofmylife.net, whose pictures I just copied because I was too lazy to screenshot my own in XP with Jing. If there is a problem, contact us.

Anyway, if you have questions, feel free to ask away! This worked perfectly for me and I’m happy with the results.

Voltaire.

Download Music without a Program, Free.

Well, that’s not entirely true. You will need Notepad and an internet browser.

Open your browser, and navigate to http://www.projectplaylist.com

Project Playlist is a wonderful site where individuals upload songs they own for the sole purpose of use that does not infringe copyright laws, such as posting the song in a playlist provided by Project Playlist that you can embed to your MySpace, Facebook or website/blog in general.

Search for your favorite song, one at a time. For this tutorial we’ll use a personal favorite of mine: the man with the machine gun – typed right in the search. In this case it will be the second song in the search as of this date. You can preview the entire track to make sure it’s error free and the right song. Find the version you’re looking for, and click (visit site) to the right of the title. You will see a green URL in the top frame with some other Project Playlist graphics and text. Make sure your URL ends in .mp3 or .mp4 anything that you know you can play. Next, open Notepad and copy/type in this small HTML code:

<a href=”http://www.public.iastate.edu/~froboy/Ryan/The Black Mages – The Skies Above/07 – The Man with the Machine Gun (Final Fantasy VIII).mp3″>The Man with the Machine Gun</a>

or:

<a href=”URL HERE”>NAME HERE</a>

File > Save As… and click the drop down box to “All Files” and type something like man.html so the file becomes an HTML file that will open in your default browser. The alternative to this is just saving it as a regular .txt file, however you need to enable file extensions so you can see it on the file and edit the full name to name.html instead of name.txt which can be done through Folder Options in Control Panel and the View tab under “Hide extensions for known file types” remove the check mark.

Now open your new .html file and you should see a regular link (possibly blue) which you can right click and hit “Save Target As…” or something similar. Save the file to your hard drive, and within a short amount of time you should have your file! You may also left click the link and it will stream within your browser or within your default media player, depending on your setup. Enjoy : – )

God speed, and Best wishes.

¥

[DIY] RFID Part 2 – DartMail

This month’s That’s GN: RFID edition will be one week early. Why? Because I have ants in my pants. This stuff is old, about 5 years, but it’s too good to wait for.

Just think of it – one of the fastest means of physical short distance transportation of a single object combined communication.

There isn’t much I can say, you have to see it to believe it. It’s not shocking, it’s not revolutionary, but it does pose some incredible theories if this is implemented “outside of the box.”

Here is a video showing what exactly DartMail is and does: [ DartMail ]

Unfortunately it’s not a how to, however there is plenty of information here: [ Phidgets ] on how to make and/or buy the materials necessary for this project.

Enjoy, I’ll be shooting people pictures myself quite soon!

God speed, and Best wishes.

¥

Touchpad for iPhone!

Touchpad for your iPhone or iPod Touch acts as a wireless touch pad for your pc! You can control the mouse on your pc through the iPhone: move the mouse around, click, double-click, and even drag (double click but keep it pressed and then move it around). Vertical scrolling is even possible, by clicking and dragging on the right edge of the iPhone screen.

You can use it to control videos, show pictures, advance slides in a presentations — whatever a regular touchpad can do.

Installation instructions:

1. You need a jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch with Installer.app on it. Here are some great instructions on how to do this.
2. Start Installer.app, and go to Sources. Click “Edit”, and then Add this repository: http://cnp.qlnk.net/
3. After the refresh, install Touchpad from the Utilities category.
4. Install VNC on the machine you want to control. I recommend TightVNC for Windows and Linux. Mac users should follow these detailed instructions (thanks, Archetype!).

Taken from http://touchpadiphone.blogspot.com/

Get Warned When Your E-Mail is Hacked

Today, I was reading around and I found this great article about how to make sure your email has not been hacked. How would you ever know if someone did get into your mail? Personal information is being stored in those accounts and people are using their email space for personal data backups. How do you make sure you are safe?

Read it right here!

”

1. Sign up for a website hit counter at www.onestatfree.com. You can leave a fake name and whatever URL you want (I used Google.com for mine).

2. You will then receive a welcome email from OneStat with a text attachment called OneStatScript.txt. Download this attachment to your computer and then delete the email (you don’t want any email snoopers finding it later). But before deleting the email, write down your OneStat account number as you will need it later.

3. Change the name of the text document to something that will make the email snooper salivate such as passwordlist. Also change the file format from a text document to a website page. So make it something like passwordlist.htm .

4. Email this newly-renamed file as an attachment to the email account you want to monitor. Make sure the email subject title also lures the snooper in (maybe something like List of Passwords. You get the idea :).

5. The trap is now set. Basically if someone opens the email and opens the attachment, OneStat will record a hit. If you then log into your OneStat account say once a day, you will see how many hits you have had to your attachment.

The OneStat account page then gives you details on each “visitor” including the date and time they accessed the web document and more importantly their location and IP address!

So how does having this information help you? Well first of all, it will alert you to change your password to something stronger. Secondly, if you see the snooper’s location and you only know one or two people there then it narrows down your list of potential suspects.”

So, take a chance, and try it out!

[Hack] Install Leopard on your PC in 3 Easy Steps

All credit goes to source.  I take no credit, simply recreating the experience here to save you guys trouble.

Well its been only a day since the Mac OSX Leopard was released officially by Apple and the hackers have managed to create a patched DVD that everyone like you and me can use to install Leopard on PC’s without having to buy a Mac. Please note the tutorial that I am going to post is still experimental and things might not work the right way simply because it is still early days in hacking Leopard to work on PC’s. Well if you don’t mind your PC getting screwed then go ahead and try out this tutorial.

Make sure you backup all important data before you proceed. Here are the things that you will need before Install Leopard on your PC…

• The Patched DVD Image
• The zip file containing the patch
• One pen drive or USB Flash Drive formatted as FAT32

Well once you have all these you can go ahead and Install Leopard..

Step 1. Getting things ready

• Burn the DVD Image onto a Single Layer DVD-R using a software like Nero.
• Format the USB Flash Drive and the drive label should be “Patcher” without the quotes. Please note it has to be “Patcher” only and nothing else for the patch to work when we apply it later.
• Extract the Zip file and put its contents into the USB Flash Drive.
• Now your USB Drive should contain a folder called “files”, if it doesn’t then check to see where you have gone wrong.

Step 2. Installing Leopard

• Now that you have the Patched DVD with you, you can now install Leopard. Pop in the DVD into the drive and boot into it by pressing F12 at the BIOS Prompt.
• Boot into the DVD and the installer should now load. It take a while though, so be patient.
• Select your Language and make sure you select Customize and you need to deselect all the packages that are displayed.
• Leopard will now install. This can take a while, so go grab yourself a coffee.
• It will ask you to Reboot, so go ahead and Reboot. Before rebooting make sure that USB Flash Drive is connected to the PC.

Step 3. Patching Leopard

• Now that you have got Leopard installed, you need to patch it. Before we do that Boot into the Leopard DVD like the way you did before.
• Wait for the Darwin Bootloader to load. Once it loads up press F8. You should now see a prompt. Type -s and hit enter. The DVD will now load in Verbose mode. Watch for any errors. It should load without a problem because you have already installed Leopard.
• Once the setup is loaded select your Language. Once done you should now be seeing the Welcome Screen. Once there navigate to Utilities-Terminal.
• Once the terminal loads up, you now need to browse to your USB Drive, so follow the steps below, typing it exactly as it appears below in the Terminal. In the command line type the following as they appear here

  cd ..
  cd ..
  cd Volumes
  cd Patcher
  cd files

  Notice the space between cd and the 2 dots.

• Now its the time to run the patcher to make sure Leopard will work on your PC. Type the following into the Terminal. ./9a581PostPatch.sh
• The Patch should now run. You can answer Yes while removing the ACPUPowerManagement.kext
• After the Script is done, you should now be able to Boot into Leopard after you restart.

Step 4. Congratulations! You’ve done the Impossible!

Well that was it. Please note this has not been extensively tested, so most of your Hardware like Sound, Network may not work. If something goes wrong for you or you want to help us, then please join the discussion over at OSX86Scene. If you noticed I haven’t posted the links to the Torrent that contains the DVD image and the zip. Well I haven’t posted them because I am sure the lawyers over at Apple are going to sue the hell out of me. If you wondering where you can find them, then head over to Demonoid and search for it.

Well here are few screenshots by Mac.nub over at the forums who could get Leopard working on his system.

Some Updates and Clarifications :

• This Hack works on Intel PC’s with atleast SSE3
• You need to format your Leopard Partition to HFS+
• Make Sure you install Leopard on MBR and not GUID or it won’t boot.
• More Patched DVD’s from Uphuck, Netkas is in the works so it would be better if you wait for the polished releases to come out.