One of the most glorious today's hackers - MuscleNerd presented his speech at HITB 2012. The conference gathered the iSO hacking elite so they have much to say this year. Despite there's only one day left till the end, two main events were scheduled exactly at Thursday and Friday. The second and most awaiting appearance is the presentation of iOS 5.1.1 untethered jailbreak. You can read more about it here. But this article is mostly about MuscleNerd at HITB 2012 and his speech about iPhone baseband unlocking. The conference is a must among security professionals all around the world. It started in Malaysia in 2002 as a small meeting of security specialists and grew to the event that takes place in two spots around the globe (Malaysia and Netherlands) at the same time. So what's so interesting about hacker's report? First of all, ‘Evolution of The iPhone Baseband And Unlocks' covers all the main aspects of iPhone's baseband hacking since the very beginning. It also explains how hackers are searching for exploits and produce different types of unlocks for various basebands. Those of you who want to know more about it and have corresponding technical knowledge, I'd recommend to read the full report (link below). The reading contains lots of hardware and software related pieces of programming so you'd better be prepared.

Some highlights of MuscleNerd's speech at HITB:

  • Intrduction. He modestly introduces himself as a mamber of  iPhone Dev Team and tech editor of iOS Hacker's Handbook by Miller, Blazakis, DaiZovi, Esser, Iozzo, Weinmann (2012)
  • General BB environment. Details on communication with baseband and facts about bb crashes
  • 3G/3GS BB crash log
  • iPhone 4 BB crash log
  • Hidden changelogs. Methods of tracking bb fixes on older iPhones
  • Diagnostic and cal routines
  • Diagnostic embedded help
  • Diagnostic routine examples
  • AT commands
  • AT commands disable bits
  • iPhone 2G SW (software) unlock
  • iPhone 3G SW (software) unlock
  • 3G/3GS BB tasks
  • ultrasnow on 3G/3GS
  • iPhone 4 software unlock. A much more challenging obstacle on the iPhone 4
  • SIM interposer unlocks
  • iPhone 4 carrier activation
  • iPhone 4 activation ticket
That's nearly the half of MuscleNerd's speech on HITB but as you can see it covers pretty much all the interesting aspects of unlocking process. If you were lucky enough to visit the conference in person - that's awesome, if not - here's the slideshow with hacker's speech. Update: Use this guide to jailbreak iOS 5.1.1 using Absinthe 2.0 What do you think of unlocking future? Doesn't it seem to you that hacking activity does down every year with every baseband or firmware release? Any chances the software unlock will still be available in the new iPhone versions? Share your thoughts in the comments below!