GeoHot Set To Release iPhone 05.11.07 Unlock On Thursday

Everyone who owns an iPhone or iPod Touch that has Jailbroken or thought about it, should have heard of a young man from Glen Rock – New Jersey called George Hotz aka GeoHot as he is know on the web.

On August 21, 2007, GeoHot announced on his blog that he had successfully executed and demonstrated the first Hardware unlock of the iPhone using a technique that was developed by a team of five hackers, Hotz being one of this team. The unlock allowed the iPhone to be used with any SIM card. He later posted the team’s 10-step method on his blog. Although other purported unlocks appeared earlier, Hotz claims theirs was the first to allow full functionality of the iPhone with almost any GSM wireless carrier without any external hardware, although the process required experience with soldering and software (12 hours of it to the technically challenged). Below is coverage on CNBC;

Hotz, who had bought his first iPhone on its launch date, was originally associated with the iPhone Dev unlocking team, but was later banned from the team. He estimates that he spent more than 500 hours working on the unlock. He said his primary aim was to enable other users to easily unlock their own iPhones.

According to his blog, Hotz traded his unlocked 8GB iPhone to Terry Daidone, the founder of Certicell, for a Nissan 350Z car and three 8GB iPhones. Hotz said he wanted to give the iPhones to the other members of the team who created the hack with him. Hotz’s hardware based unlocking technique has largely been replaced by software unlocking that does not require dis-assembly of the iPhone.

George Hotz recently developed the first software unlock for the iPhone’s new Bootloader Version 4.6 that was previously only achievable with a “testpoint based hardware unlock”

George gave the iPhone Dev Team an exploit he found in the at+stkprof command that they used as an injection vector for their yellowsn0w payload, which resulted in the first software iPhone 3G unlock. In the sourcecode for YellowSn0w, the 3G unlock daemon, it reads “thanks geohot for at+stkprof 02.28 injection vector”.

On July 3, 2009, Hotz announced purplera1n, the first public software exploit for jailbreaking the iPhone 3GS. Details were posted on his blog.

On October 11, 2009, Hotz released blackra1n, a jailbreak for all iPhones and iPod Touches (except for the 3G 8GB model). The only caveat was that the iPod Touch 3G would need a “tethered jailbreak” to work. The hashtag, #blackra1n was the number one Trend on Twitter for a few minutes by request from GeoHot, occasionally losing to a non-existing fake jailbreak under the name AppuloHa1l, released on ‘#ha1lday’, October 11. AppuloHa1l however was a RickRoll.

On October 25, 2009 Hotz released Blackra1n RC2 an update to his previous blackra1n utility, This version allows MC Model users to jailbreak their iPod touches as well.

GeoHot or the iPhone Dev-Team have NEVER and will NEVER charge money  for their work, they see it as a hobby and just want to help all iPhone users make the most of the devices they bought.

There are, however, some slimy people in the world that take advantage of this freeware and sell it as their own, packaged up with a slightly different GUI. DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THESE SCAMMERS!!! The only true Jailbreak/Unlock software comes from GeoHot or The iPhone Dev-Team.

One such “company” that sells this freeware is run by Jody Sanders, a particularly slimy Englishman who now has a villa in Marbella thanks to selling other peoples hard work. He offered a $10,000 reward to the first person to find a new unlock for the 05.11.07 baseband, why??, because how can he sell others work if it doesn’t exist, right?

GeoHot recently announced and proved by way of video that he had successfully unlocked the 05.11.07 baseband present in the 3.1.2 firmware. He promptly declined Sanders “reward” and stated Blacksn0w will be released to everyone for FREE on November 4th.

In an effort to reduce the amount of people taken in by these scammers, GeoHot has asked everyone to spread the word;

IF YOU WANT A JAILBREAK OR UNLOCK FOR YOUR IDEVICE, DO NOT PAY FOR FREEWARE!!! To help, please repeat this on Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and anywhere else you hang out online. Here is a link to GeoHot’s blog with his campaign request.