I was one of the first iPhone users in the Netherlands due to a friend who imported one for me from the states. There was no appstore back in those day and to enable the phone in the Netherlands, one had to jailbrake it and remove the carrier limitation. I have been hacking iPhones ever since, sometimes getting in trouble by doing stupid stuff but always able to fix it. Always.

I haven't touched my old iPhone 1 for some years, I have a iPhone 4 now and the 1 model is really running on an outdated iOS that cant be upgraded anymore and feels slow. That is, it should have felt slow. But it didn't when I booted it this morning.

My daughter might want the iPhone, without SIM and Apple appstore credentials, she is nearly 8, just for the games and the camera. So I hooked the iPhone up to the power and when I came back, I saw the message that I had to wait for over 6 million seconds, decades!

After a bit of Googling I found the solution, without going through DFU, rejailbreak and restore. For this to work, you need:

1. A jailbroken iPhone
2. WiFi enabled on the iPhone and still hooked up to you local WiFi (I needed to put the old pass-phrase back on my WiFi encryption)
3. the root password of the iPhone (my second guess was right :-)
4. A computer

Then do the following. Boot your iPhone, go to a terminal of a unix box and find out what the IP address of the iPhone is by doing an
arp -a
and pick the iPhone out of it. Now do a
ssh root@ipaddress
and type your root password. The default one is "alphine". I changed it but remembered it. Now do
cd /private/var/mobile/Libary/Preferences
and remove or move the com.apple.springboard.plist file.
I dont like rm for this so moved it with a
mv com.apple.springboard.plist com.apple.springboard.plist.bak

Now do a
cd /private/var/Keychains
and move the keychain-2.db file
mv keychain-2.db keychain-2.db.bak

Do a hard reset of your iPhone (home power) and when it reboots, it should have no lock and no "wait xyz minutes".

My daughter will be using the iPhone shortly :-)

This IS weird. I have my own protected wifi network. My macs are connected to it. I have a DHCP server giving 10.0.1/24 to wifi hosts. I have a DSL line towards XS4ALL.

Today I installed an ethernet over power out of the box between a fixed IP macmini down and WiFi / DSL router upstairs. When I could not mount a disk from my WiFi network towards the fixed macmini, I started digging... And found out the above picture; I AM connected to MY wifi network, however, the DSL router somehow has default gateway towards a network of a neighbour that seems to be connected to Versatel!?!?

Yes, my fixed macs still use my own WiFiconnection. But my wifi macs while using my own network go via the mesh network of the powerlines via DHCP server of the neighbour towards to the internet via my neighbour.

If you thought that stealing bandwidth via WEP Wifi was cool in the late 90ies, this Ethernet of Power breaking will be even bigger.

But.. but.. Surley the protocol running Ethernet of Power is encrypted? Yes. But with a default key! Both my neighbour and I shopped the same box at the local shop with the same boxes with the default key installed. Making our power of ethenret devices / lines ONE network. Once I "resetted" the key manually on both my devices, I couldnt see my neighbour anymore and it were two networks again.

So
1) never trust anything
2) always change the defaults
3) You will hear about breakins like this in the near future. For example snffing all the traffic via the office next to a political party...

Will put "encryption" on the power network to prevent this... I hope

Fring is a cool service, Fring on the iPhone is below zero kelvin! I just installed it -thanks to mikew41- and Fring is ral real cool. To give you an idea on what it can do

1. import jabber / gtalk friends and chat with them via Jabber
2. import friends from other Instant Messaging service and use the service. I do not use these but think MSN, Y!, ICQ etc
3. setup your twitter account and have a multitasking twitter client in the background (keyword: background)
4. Import Skype contact, sign in and USE skype over Wifi!
5. Setup SIP and use your iPhone to make real VOIP calls over wifi over the internet

As you can see, a switch army knife. Skype by itself would have been cool enough for me, SIP a great much needed add on. But this is an application that communicates with all services I use and acts as the information hub between my twitter, my XS4ALL VOIP, my Skype and my jabber friends. I think it it the best application available on the iPhone. Installation is a 10 seconds job once you are in "installer" (you do have a jailbroken phone I hope?). Simpley ad the repository to installer, tab on fring and you are ready! This is great.

Logitech to acquire Slim Devices!, as an owner of a squeezebox I can say that this is a smart move of Logitech. It is a very good product and cool company. If you dont own a squeezebox but do have a larger collection of MP3's, even then look at this product. Because all their software is OpenSource, you can download the server and the client. Doenst come with the cool device but still.

Lets hope that Logitech will continue to follow the business model of Slimdevices, give a away the recipe and open a restaurant.

But it was too damn cold and the wifi crapped out every time a train came into the station..

Of course posting from a hotspot is nothing special but this was different: I was using socks over SSH over an DNS tunnel to the TOR network. I had read the initial articles about using DNS as a covert channel to tunnel IP traffic from closed Wifi hotspots a couple years ago but last [:to_fosdem_and_beyoned|weekend] I was staying in an hotel with expensive Wifi and an 2 hour minimum so I decided to check what the state of the art of DNS tunneling is.

And it turned out to be pretty easy using SSH and a little perl script and a willing DNS server from the TOR network; it worked like a "slow" charm from my home network and the train journey from Haarlem offered a great opportunity for a field test but the stops in the stations were too short to post anything so I ended sitting outside on the platform but gave up after my fingers got too numb to type...the stuff I do for willy...