Saturday, March 12, 2011

Next weekend! iPhone 4 will Permanently Unlocked ?


Well! This is a quick heads up for all those who are anxiously waiting for unlocking theiriPhone 4 on baseband 02.10.04, 03.10.01 and 04.10.01. The most vocal member of iPhone Dev Team Musclenerd is confirming that they should be able to bruteforce crack the unique 40-bit NCK key on the device by next weekend, which can then be used to unlock iPhone 4 permanently.

What is this NCK-key cracking? How does it work?
The NCK-key is generated by Apple if you’d like to unlock you iPhone officially. This “NCK-unlock” method was initially developed by Geohot  while working on iPhone 2G unlock that could “crack” these 15 digits long unique key easily. Geohot’s NCKBF program could do around 100,000 keys/second.
Now, with this exploit in hand, iOS hackers can’t unlock your baseband, but they can capture more information from the baseband to speed up this cracking process. Since the NORID and CHIPID (unique for every device) are known, you’d apparently only have to check 40 more bits (5 digits). A 40 bits key is theoretically crackable on “home hardware” within a week (24/7). The downside of this approach is that you’ll have to keep your computer turned on, and your iPhone has to be connected. And that is the reason why they never tried it before.
Here, “by Next weekend” does not necessarily mean that you will get iPhone 4 unlock by next weekend. It would just be a confirmation, whether the exploit, they are working on, can be used to unlock iPhone 4 permanently or not. If they are able to crack this 40-bit unique NCK key of the device, there are high chances that your iPhone 4 would be unlocked permanently.
This new exploit comes as a savior for iPhone Dev Team, after failing to deliverpromised unlock for iPhone4.

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