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iPhone 1.1.1 jailbreak released

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Last night I finally got 3rd party apps running on the phone again after the disastrous 1.1.1 update. I used Niacin’s TIFF exploit to get write access to the filesystem, and then followed the directions from the iPhone Dev Team (detailed here) to get SSH and AppTapp installed.

It’s still a very manual process, but way easier than the downgrade to 1.0.2 then update to 1.1.1 nonsense. But now I have my eBook reader and IM client running again. Summerboard doesn’t work, and neither does Sketch or Customize(apparently Customize does work, thanks Brian), but for the most part, everything runs just fine. A list of common applications and their compatibility can be found on this iPhone Dev Wiki page.

If you’re going to try this, remember that this doesn’t get you the carrier unlock, just 3rd party apps. Unlocks are still coming, though there have been reports that the IPSF stuff still works. Apparently it was the only software unlock that didn’t brick the iPhone with the 1.1.1 update. Naturally, it costs $60.

Now to wait for the inevitable breakage from Apple’s next update. Sigh. Can’t we all just get along?

Update: Looks like they decrypted the ramdisks now.

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Bridge Construction Set goes universal!

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BCS Screenshot
Finally – the addictive building game gets an upgrade to a universal binary. The old PPC version ran ok on my Intel box, but some of the more complex bridges got REALLLY SLOW during simulations.

You owe it to yourself to get a copy of this game. Also check out Bridgebuilder-game.com to find tons of pre-built bridges and some nice solutions to the more tricky levels.

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Toppler Updated to Universal Binary

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I’ve updated Toppler to a universal binary, using the same source tree as the previous 1.1.1-1 version. This, unfortunately, requires it to be run under 10.4.x. If you’re still running 10.2.x or 10.3.x, you can still download the previous PPC version (works great under Rosetta as well) from the same page, just under the main download link.

One quick thing to note – if you have any high score files left over from a PPC->Intel conversion, these won’t read properly with this version. The high-score code is very endian dependent, and I didn’t update it to properly handle all cases. No biggie, but if you see some strange high scores in there, get rid of your /Users//.toppler directory.

I’m getting ready to post new binaries for Fillets and Freedroid as well, so stay tuned.

Update: One more update to 1.1.3-4 to include some language fixes and new levels. Check the toppler page for details.

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New Toppler Version 1.1.1

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Toppler Icon Yet another version of Tower Toppler, version 1.1.1 was releases by Andreas Röver. This comes quickly on the heels of the 1.1.0 version. The main changes are:

  • Included Pasis 2 Towers
  • New Finnish translation
  • Updated French Translation

I’ve updated the OS X packages on my Toppler page. Worth a download for the new level set!

Thanks Andreas!

Update, December 24, 2004: The issue with Toppler not running on 10.2.8 systems has been fixed. It was due to a missing function in the 10.2 C libs. The new version is 1.1.1-1

New Toppler Version 1.1.0

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Toppler Icon Andreas Röver has released a new version of the Tower Toppler source code, 1.1.0. The basic changes are:

  • Joystick support (though I have no way of testing this…)
  • In the level designer, elevators can now be made to pass doors
  • There was a condition where the little green guy could get stuck
  • A Windows bug with a strange .dll was fixed (not that this affects you Mac users)

I’ve updated the OS X packages on my Toppler page, though this update for Mac users probably isn’t that big a deal.

Thanks Andreas!

MD5 Begins Its Downward Slide

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It appears that the usefulness of MD5 checksums is finally beginning to wane. This security analysis by Dan Kaminsky gives some frightening details of how to create two files that perform different tasks, but have the same MD5 checksum. Bad news. Now this attack relies on the possession of two specially-computed files that have the same checksum, as detailed by Joux and Wang previously:

For MD5 (and actually a number of popular hashing algorithms, SHA-1 not among them), it is possible to compute particular classes of input data for which subtle changes can be silently introduced without causing apparent changes in the final MD5 hash. Capacity is not huge – of the two 128 byte proof-ofconcept files released by Wang, only six bits differ. But many ”doppelganger” sets can be computed, each of which may be swapped out with the other at no effect to the resultant hash. The sets are two MD5 blocks long. Because it’s possible to compute new blocks on demand, a generic ”antivirus” style colliding block detector isn’t possible. It may be possible to generate a custom weak class detector. The ability to generate colliding datasets exposes a fundamentally new mode of operation for MD5.

Now, you don’t have to start worrying about this immediately. Fully-practical attacks are still over the horizon. However, as Dan’s paper shows us, the horizon may be closer than you think. You may want to read up on SHA-1.