iPhone Hacking
There have been a lot of articles out recently on how to hack your iPhone. The Inman recently posted instructions on how to add SSH to your phone, so that you can SFTP things to your phone.
I thought that it was time to post my little solution to this problem. When I started looking for my solution I had two requirements:
- Mount the iPhone as a removable drive
- Rehacking had to be dead simple, since I like to update my phone
I think my solution satisfies both of those requirements nicely. You ready to get more out of your iPhone? Good, lets get to it.
First, we install some crap on our mac
Right, the first thing we need to do is download and install MacFUSE, a mac native port of the very cool File-system in USErspace found over in the Linux world. Basically with FUSE we can create a File System out of virtually anything. Some of the popular implementations are GmailFS (Gmail File System), SpotlightFS (yeah, a Spotlight File System) and my personal favorite sshfs, which as you no doubt guessed allows us to create a FileSystem out of any space we can connect to via SSH. We will be using sshfs with our little project.
Once we have downloaded and installed MacFUSE we need to download the sshfs that is linked on the MacFUSE Google code site. Move sshfs to somewhere on your hard drive and then restart your machine, if you haven't already (MacFUSE installs a kernel extension, so it won't be loaded until we restart our machine).
Now we install some crap on our iPhone
Next we need to download and run a program called AppTapp Installer which will allow us to install ssh on our lovely iPhones.
The process is painless and once your iPhone restarts it will be freed from jail, and have a new native app, "installer" which get this, allows you to install 3rd party applications on your iPhone. I have an apache web server running on my iPhone right now, it is freaky.
Once your phone restarts, tap the installer icon, add the "community sources" package, then add the "BSD subsystem" package, and finally install OpenSSH.
At this point your phone can be accessed at whatever IP it has on your Wireless network, as you would any normal ssh enabled server. Open up sshfs, type in the Server Address, root for the username and "/" (without the quotes) as the Remote Directory, hit enter and wait for the password dialog. Type in the iPhone root password, which you can find online by googling, and after a second or two you will see a folder/drive icon on your desktop labeled the ip of your iPhone. Here is a shot of mine mounted on my desktop:
And here is an image of the contents of my iPhone's "applications" folder:
And that people, is it. From this point on when you want to add something to your iPhone, like I don't know... a custom ringtone, just fire up sshfs and go for it. Pretty simple.
Pingbacks & Trackbacks
- MacManX.com | Blogroll Dive: 8/28/07 » ...Sarah answered, "When is the best time to start [the violin]?" Chris shared his method of installing third-party applications on his iPhone. And,...
- kobak pont org » links for 2007-08-28 » ...camino) Chris J Davis leirja hogy tegy ssh-t, s egy csomo hasznos dolgot az iPhonera...
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Stroll on over and visit Luke Dorny
August 27, 2007
Wow, this is great!
Love the "I have an apache web server running on my iPhone right now, it is freaky." bit!
Stroll on over and visit David C.
August 27, 2007
Great tutorial, I have only recently finally understood all this SSH business, as I have recently built my own Linux powered MythTV box and tried (although unsuccessfully) to login via SSH.
Stroll on over and visit Chris Messina
August 28, 2007
Ooo, totally awesome! I was waiting for something like this -- now I can totally back up my shiznit without a problem!
Stroll on over and visit SEO Carly
August 28, 2007
"Love the "I have an apache web server running on my iPhone right now, it is freaky."
Yes mobile technology has come a long way in a matter of 5 years. Nearly 18 months ago now i installed Raccoon, a Nokia port of Apache httpd on my N70 turning it in to a webserver. I also had PuTTY for Symbian configured so i could log-in and manage servers from anywhere.
I also dumped the MS Bluetooth stack in favour of Widcomm, and configured mRouter/GnuBox to share the PC's connection over bluetooth which was pretty fast with Opera Mini.
Give it 5 years, and the guy you pass walking down the street will be serving up pages to 1,000 concurrent users on a website sitting in his top pocket.
Great post Chris, unfortunately no iPhone here "yet".
Stroll on over and visit Chris Dary
September 3, 2007
I don't own an iPhone - but my curiosity is getting the best of me.
I assume you can change the root password once you login. If you change it, though, could this affect anything else in the system, or maybe problems with tech support or some such?
Just a random thought. If not, your phone might be hacked in your pocket while sitting at starbucks!
Stroll on over and visit Chris J. Davis
September 4, 2007
Indeed, you need to change your root password as I have. There are tutorials on line as to how this is accomplished. The video tut from UNEASYsilence is one of the better ones IMO.
As for what this could do with regards to support, it is a software hack, simply restore your phone via iTunes and you are golden. I have done this a number of times.
Stroll on over and visit Christon
September 16, 2007
Love the walkthrough - very helpful. Might be worth noting though, that AppTapp Installer doesn't seem to work on PPC macs. I tried several different permutations - iPhone fresh from restore to iPhone unlocked for use without activation on my G5 and it crashed the iPhone 3 times. I finally pulled out my MacBook as an experiment, and voila, it works. I didn't see this stated anywhere on the creator's site. Of course, maybe my G5 is just screwy.
Stroll on over and visit Chris J. Davis
September 16, 2007
That is odd Christon. I use AppTapp Installer on my G5 here with no problems. Good to know you got it working though.
Stroll on over and visit Steve
December 26, 2007
Greate article.
Thats what I was looking for.