A Russian hacker has managed to crack the third version of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch operating software, before a release date has even been set.
The hacker, known as “Vortex”, has posted the crack on the “QuickPWN” blog, a site known for providing cracks known as “jailbreaks” to the iPhone community.
“This is an unofficial release and it’s not created by the iPhone Dev Team. I know there are iPhone developers out there who want to upgrade to iPhone 3.0, iPod Touch 3.0, or iPhone 3G 3.0, but also want to keep their jailbreak,” the site says.
“The Russian hacker Vortex has once again released an unofficial jailbreak at iPhoneApps.ru. I tried it on my iPod Touch with firmware 3.0 beta 2 and it works!”
Jailbreaking an iPhone device allows the user to install unofficial applications and tamper with the device’s firmware to customise it, enabling features like background wallpapers and unique icons.
Apple has tried to stamp out the use of jailbreaking by amending its terms and conditions to ban the practice.
“You will not, through use of the Apple Software, services or otherwise, create any application or other program that would disable, hack or otherwise interfere with the security solution, or any security, digital signing, digital rights management, verification or authentication mechanisms implemented in or by the iPhone operating system software,” the company’s terms of use states.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
