All Things Digital

Well, this certainly throws a bit of a wet blanket on Apple’s (AAPL) aspirations for the iPhone in enterprise.

The iPhone Dev Team, the folks responsible for the notorious iPhone jailbreaks, have cracked iPhone 2.0–before the software has even shipped. After decrypting the version of 2.0 included in the recently released iPhone SDK, the Dev Team jailbroke it so that it will run most any application (see video below).

Quite an achievement. And one that may have inspired shrieks of rage at Apple HQ. Many companies will obviously be put off by the security issues raised by such a hack, and it’s not going to be easy for Apple to close this hole. What’s more, if 2.0 is indeed hacked, it means Apple has potentially lost control of the sole point of entry to the device through which it had hoped to vet third-party applications.

Research In Motion (RIMM) must be smirking into its cornflakes this morning. Unless, of course, this is all part of Apple’s master plan. In which case, Steve Jobs is smirking into his soy yogurt.

The sputtering outrage over the firmware update that disabled third-party iPhone applications and bricked iPhones uncoupled from AT&T’s network became a cry of victory yesterday when the iPhone dev community said it had found a way to again implement third-party applications on the device.

According to Engadget, the iPhone Dev Team, an unofficial group of programmers who developed the jailbreaking tools that opened up iPhone 1.0.1, have crafted a second set of tools that exploits a vulnerability in Mobile Safari to open iPhone 1.1.1. They’ve not yet released a general-use version of the tool, but one is surely on the way.

That said, there’s no telling how long it will work once it’s released. As Engadget notes, these newer jailbreaks aren’t nearly as robust as their predecessors. “… Unfortunately, it sounds like most (if not all) of these new hacks rely solely on that single TIFF exploit in Mobile Safari, meaning that everyone’s back to square one the moment Apple beams v1.1.2 to the public at large.”

Apple’s fight to keep the iPhone off unauthorized networks will apparently begin in earnest later this week. In a statement released Monday, Cupertino warned users that they can “cause irreparable damage” to their iPhones by modifying them to work on unauthorized wireless networks.

By “irreparable,” Apple seems to mean damage that may turn unlocked iPhones into iBricks when it issues future software upgrades. Perhaps even the one that will arrive later this week.

“Apple strongly discourages users from installing unauthorized unlocking programs on their iPhones,” the company’s statement read. “Users who make unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone violate their iPhone software license agreement and void their warranty.”

So what are owners of unlocked iPhones to do? Avoid the forthcoming software update until the iPhone Dev Team releases a tool to restore or re-lock your phone. And according to a statement issued by the group today, that’s likely to happen sometime next week:

Sept. 25 statement from the iPhone unlockers

“Based on download numbers, the iPhone Dev Team believes that, worldwide, several hundred thousand people have unlocked their iPhones. That number continues growing every day. The removal of the lock, a bug, was a major step forward in the iPhone development. It made the iPhone free and useful to anyone, not only to those in certain countries.

“Apple now announces that the next firmware update, expected later this week, will possibly break the handset of all of us free users in the World. It speaks of “damage” done to the firmware and “unauthorized access” to our own property, The removal of those firmware problems, which were built in in favor for AT&T, does not cause “damage” as they want to make us believe.

“We will provide you with a tool in the next week which will be able to recover your nck counter and seczones and even enables you to restore your phone to a factory-like state.

“In the meantime we advise you not to update your free iPhone with the upcoming firmware. Wait for the next version to be fixed to work properly with your carrier and not break your phone.”