Hey all,
I had a little free time and was rooting through my iPhone's folders with WinSCP and I came across a fun little plist.
With said plist and a little hackery, the following can be achieved:
A fake, albeit convincing, restore image:
Fooling iTunes:
Real iPhone Snapshots:
I promise you, none of the above have been doctored in any way other than to remove sensitive information.
This is extremely easy to do:
1. Making the fake firmware file:
All you need to do is take any large file and zip it, then name the zip file to "ipsw." For my screenshot I took the 1.1.1 ipsw, renamed it to zip, unzipped it, then rezipped the new file with a lower compression in order to obtain a larger file size, and finally renamed it.
2. Modifying the plist on your iPhone:
SSH into your iPhone and navigate to "/System/Library/CoreServices"
In this folder, there's a file called "SystemVersion.plist" which is what we edit. That plist looks something like this:
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>BasedOn</key>
<string>Whatever It's based on</string>
<key>ProductBuildVersion</key>
<string>Your Firmware's build number</string>
<key>ProductCopyright</key>
<string>1983-2007 Apple Inc.</string>
<key>ProductName</key>
<string>OS X</string>
<key>ProductVersion</key>
<string>Your firmware's version</string>
</dict>
</plist>
The two bold values are what you need to edit. Apple iPhone firmware numbers typically follow this sort of format: #X###x ("#" being a number and "X" and "x" being upper- and lower-case letters). For example, 3A109a is 1.1.1's build number.
3. Taking fake screenshots and distributing them:
Reboot your iPhone and plug it into iTunes, which will see it as whatever firmware you set it as. Now you can take screenshots of iTunes, of your fake ipsw, and of your iPhone using the snap utility by Erica Sadun. Now all you have to do is send a few emails, and you're world famous for having cracked Apple's databases, stolen partially-developed firmware, and jailbreaking it
And when everyone starts yelling that you Photoshopped the images, you can honestly say that they're completely real.
Have fun
I'll go back to working on iDemocracy now
-- Drakenza
Disclaimer:
Don't really try to get famous by faking screenshots of a new firmware. This tutorial is just for fun... If you get sued by Apple or hated by the MMi community or whatever, you can't hold me responsible.
11-17-2007, 07:02 PM
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