MacOSG: How to turn off the iPhone/iPod touch’s ‘kill-switch’
Posted by Dave Merten 
Aug 16, 2008 at 9:43pm
Recently it was discovered that Apple has a “kill-switch” built in the iPhone OS 2.x software in which the iPhone can phone home, check for unauthorized applications, and disable them. If you are willing to jailbreak your iPhone, there is a way to turn this kill-switch off.
Security expert Jonathan Zdziarski has posted a way for blocking Apple’s kill-switch. After you have jailbroken your iPhone you need to edit your ‘/etc/hosts’ file and insert the following line:
127.0.0.1 iphone-services.apple.com
This will tell your iPhone not to bother looking up ‘iphone-services.apple.com’ via DNS and go straight to ‘127.0.0.1’ which is always the IP address for ‘localhost’ (the iPhone).
Accessing /etc/hosts via SSH using Transmit
“Macsimum News” is a proud supporter of Planet Gumbo, which feeds the hungry. We urge you to help them in their efforts.
Leave a comment ⇒
Please post the article topic & comment in our forums. No registration required.
Article Information
Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This
Contributor
Dave Merten
Dave was one of the founding guides at ‘The Mining Company,’ now known as About.com, in February 1998. Dave was their ‘Focus on Mac Support’ guide. In 2004 he started ‘G5 Owners Support Group,’ and in 2005, renamed it ‘Mac Owners Support Group.’ In 2006, he started the ‘MacOSG Support Corner’ column here at Macsimum News.
View Dave Merten's Articles
