Hackers gathered at the annual HITBSecConf2012 held at Amsterdam, The Netherlands this week. Famous iPhone baseband hacker MuscleNerd was there to present a topic on iPhone baseband unlock.

This conference has become the ‘must attend’ event in the calendars of security professionals from around the world. Having started as a small gathering of Malaysian security specialists in 2002, the event has since expanded out of its home base in Kuala Lumpur to Dubai and in 2010, The Netherlands.

Inspiring hackers should definitely read his presentation on ‘Evolution of The iPhone Baseband And Unlocks.’ It details the history of iPhone’s baseband and how hackers manage to find exploits and developed various types of unlocks for iPhones.

MuscleNerd admits that initially he was interested in hacking baseband but now focusing more of his time maintaining and extending redsn0w. Probably that’s because Apple had patched all potential exploits on newer iPhones which left him no choice but concentrating more on jailbreaking.

The presentation is rather technical and it would require some background knowledge on hardware and embedded software programming to fully appreciate the contents of his presentation.

Some of the interesting highlights are:

• General overview of iPhone baseband – how it works, exploits and and how Apple patched them
• How Dev Team monitored each baseband update – making exploits less possible each time
• Technical details of baseband codes
• Details of iPhone 2G software unlock – the earliest version of iPhone software unlock
• Details of iPhone 3G/3GS software unlock (ultrasn0w)
• Details of iPhone 4 unlock – ultrasn0w for baseband 1.59.00, how Apple added Data Execution Prevention (DEP) called “crossbar” which was eventually bypassed by MuscleNerd and hacker @planetbeing
• SIM interposer unlock e.g. Gevey SIM
• Activation ticket unlock method such as SAM unlock by loktar_sun
• 3G/3GS baseband downgrades, iPhone 4 baseband downgrade, BBTickets
• Details of iPhone 4S baseband architecture
• Baseband 6.15.00 unlock for 3G/3GS, why newer chip can’t take baseband 6.15.00 and will brick it

Go ahead and view his presentation here. It will give you ideas and probably some truths why software unlock might be a thing of a past.

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