So let me give you a run down of just what has been going on. My last post (before the iPhone how-to) was February 20th of last year. A lot has happened since then. My absence initially started with a teacher at school drafting me into the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). I was to compete in the Networking Concepts category. It was a 100 question multiple choice test on various networking topics. I took 1st place at both regional and state levels, so I qualified for the trip to compete at the FBLA-PBL nationals in Chicago last summer. I went. I had no chance, being more into coding than networking, but I guess I’m not half bad at it. :) From the people I talked to that competed against me, every single one of them had some form of networking certification.

While I was in Chicago, I snuck off from the group and took a taxi to the Apple store on Michigan Avenue a.k.a. the Magnificent Mile. I got there right as the store opened, so I walked in and bought my iPhone in under 5 minutes. (The big wtf here is that the Cingular store had a line around the block…) Once purchased, I had a 3-4 mile hike back to the hotel. It was pretty fun. :)

So the rest of my summer break after I got back from Chicago was spent on IRC trying to hack the iPhone. Yep, I knew most of the hackers and even was one of the first to start a serial dock for the thing, I just suck at soldering. I didn’t get to do much before I had to do summer assignments for school. It was fun while it lasted though. I got to meet many cool people, including Captain Crunch.

Now, we’re getting to the exciting stuff. A few weeks after school started I got offered a job at a startup in Silicon Valley doing PHP coding. The startup is called Qubescape. We’ll have a sweet product out shortly, that’s all I’m going to say. It’s been awesome so far. I work with some really good people.

That brings us up to what’s going on currently. Currently, I have very little time thanks to school. AP US History and AP Physics B are keeping me slammed with work. My AP US History teacher has an insane passing record and intends to keep it that way — which I’m cool with because I enjoy the class. On the other hand, my AP Physics teacher just can’t teach. He’s a good guy, he understands it, but he *cannot* explain it; so, I’m left to figuring it out on my own.

Time is going to get even more rare as I am involved in FBLA once again this year. I will be the first from my school to compete in the Internet Application Programming category. It looks incredibly easy. The project requires a website to track class averages and GPA with simple user authentication and a presentation explaining areas of your code the judges are interested in.

Anyone else that read this blog heard of FBLA? It’s nationwide, but many people don’t seem to know about it.

Now, they did tell me one thing. The keys are embedded in the .NET binary in JLJ’s iPhone activation server. So I began working and this led to where I’m at now, a how-to. This post will not provide the tokens, nor will I provide them until JLJ says I can. This article will walk you through the process of obtaining them so you can activate your iPhone on a mac though, as suggested by the developers of the tool.zip we will be using.
As of now, you can just download the newly released iPhoneActivatorTool to activate your phone. This is a newer version of tool.zip that includes the plist file required.

Step 1:
Download the following files:

• JLJ’s PhoneActSrv - Mirror
• tool.zip - mirror
• My iPhone Decrypt App
• Lutz Roeder’s Reflector .NET disassembler

Step 2:
This step is where you’ll actually prepare the data you need to get. You will need windows with .NET framework 2.0+. JLJ’s PhoneActSrv’s binary has the keys stored within it, encrypted using AES. In order to get the keys, we need to disassemble the binary. To do this, you need to open up Reflector and go to File->Open then locate and open the PhoneActSrv.exe file.

Once it’s loaded, you will see the entry in the tree view. Right click on PhoneActSrv and click Export. Make sure you save this somewhere that you will remember, you will spend a lot of time looking at the disassembly. You also need access to it over the mac.

Step 3:
Now, open the directory you saved the disassembly files to. You should see the following files:

• a.cs
• b.cs
• AssemblyInfo.cs
• d.cs
• DotfuscatorAttribute.cs
• e.cs
• e.resources
• f.resources
• Global.cs
• PhoneActSrv.csproj

If you see these files, you did step 2 correct. If not, go back and do it again. This is where you may need some coding experience, as I can’t just hand these keys out. I provide you with enough hints that I feel you can find the keys. Unzip my iPhone Decrypt application and open up iphone_decrypt.c and read the comments. For each variable needed, I provide you with a hint on how to find it. All the values needed are located in the d.cs file.

Once you find them, plug the values into their appropriate arrays in iphone_decrypt.c. Once you have what you think are the values, open up a terminal, go to the directory iphone_decrypt.c is located in and run the following in console.

$ ./build.sh
$ chmod +x iphone_decrypt
$ ./iphone_decrypt

If all goes well, you should see something like the following on the terminal:

kalashnikov:~/Desktop/iPhone-RE/AES decrypt cody$ ./build.sh
kalashnikov:~/Desktop/iPhone-RE/AES decrypt cody$ ./iphone_decrypt
Welcome to the iPhone JLJ key decryptor. Find the data in his app and set the variables in the code to this one.
Setting AES key...done
---1076
Attempting to decrypt the key...done
Key is <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<Document xmlns="http://www.apple.com/itms/" disableHistory="true" disableNavigation="true">
&nbsp;
<Protocol>
    <plist version="1.0">
        <dict>
	
          <key>iphone-activation</key>
          <dict>
            <key>unbrick</key>
            <true/>
            <key>activation-record</key>
            <dict>
              <key>AccountToken</key><data>*snip*</data>
              <key>AccountTokenSignature</key><data>*snip*/data>
            </dict>
          </dict>
	
        </dict>
    </plist>
</Protocol>
&nbsp;
</Document>??V?n9???lsQ?
Freeing up memory...done

If you do, move onto step 4, if not, keep trying.

Step 4:
Unzip tool.zip and open up the blank.plist file in something like textmate. It’s just an XML file. blank.plist contains the following:

<?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>ActivationRecord</key>
	<dict>
		<key>AccountToken</key>
		<data>
		</data>
		<key>AccountTokenCertificate</key>
		<data>
		</data>
		<key>AccountTokenSignature</key>
		<data>
		</data>
		<key>DeviceCertificate</key>
		<data>
		</data>
		<key>FairPlayKeyData</key>
		<data>
		</data>
	</dict>
	<key>Request</key>
	<string>Activate</string>
	
</dict>
</plist>

Copy the AccountToken and AccountTokenCertificate lines and their data lines from the console output of iphone_decrypt. Paste them into the plist file so that it looks like the following:

<?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>ActivationRecord</key>
	<dict>
		<key>AccountToken</key><data>*snip*</data>
	              <key>AccountTokenSignature</key><data>*snip*</data>
	</dict>
	<key>Request</key>
	<string>Activate</string>
	
</dict>
</plist>

Save this file as activate.plist in the same directory as blank.plist

Step 5:
Activate your iPhone by running the following command in the terminal after changing to the directory that blank.plist is located in.

$ ./tool --activate activate.plist

You should see the following output on the console:

kalashnikov:~/Desktop/tool Folder cody$ ./tool –activate test.plist
iPhoneActivatorTool 1.0
2007-07-04 15:10:43.887 tool[10443] Found iPhone Device: 1
2007-07-04 15:10:43.887 tool[10443] Connecting…
2007-07-04 15:10:43.892 tool[10443] Checking Pairing…
2007-07-04 15:10:43.905 tool[10443] Starting device session…
2007-07-04 15:10:43.990 tool[10443] ActivationState: Unactivated
2007-07-04 15:10:43.990 tool[10443] Deactivating your iPhone…
2007-07-04 15:10:44.002 tool[10443] New ActivationState: Unactivated
2007-07-04 15:10:44.003 tool[10443] Activating your iPhone…
2007-07-04 15:10:44.163 tool[10443] New ActivationState: MismatchedICCID
2007-07-04 15:10:44.163 tool[10443] Your iPhone was successfully activated.

You will probably see a popup about your iPhone having an incorrect SIM card. Just slide the unlock slider at the bottom to the right and you should be ready to go.

Last week, I got “The Knack.” It seems to bite any computer guy that comes into contact with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) hardware. It all started when a fellow programmer friend of mine sent me a link to a DEC Easy WebServer. This is a relabeled DEC Alpha Multia that shipped with Windows NT 4.0 Server. It included some sort of Netscape software for setting up a webserver easily. Well, I figured I would go ahead and add it to my watch list, since it was only $20 + shipping. I continued browsing and around and found a DEC VAXstation 3100 for $18 + shipping. I have been wanting a VAX for a while, so I bought it. 2 days later, I bought the DEC Easy WebServer.

So in total, I spent over $100 in a week on computer hardware that is older than me.(almost as old as me in the Multia’s case) The VAXstation came and it ended up missing the whole SCSI controller board, so I’m still looking for one of those. The Multia came today and works great, but it seems to operate in “Space heater emulation mode” all the time, I’d hate to see it under a full CPU load.

I tried installing OpenBSD/Alpha on the Multia tonight, with little luck. The installer boots and then says it can find no drives, but the hardware compatibility list clearly says the Multia is supported. So, I tried to find Debian net boot floppy images and failed. I’m currently installing FreeBSD/Alpha as I’m writing this, hopefully it works better.

Here are a few pictures of my new machines, more pictures of the Multia can be found here; more pictures of the VAXstation can be found here.

School has been crazy lately. I’ve been loaded down with homework most of the time, and on top of that I’ve been drafted by a few of the teachers at school to participate in the FBLA competitions. I’ll be competing in the single person test on computer networking. The test is a 100 question test given at a local university. I’m competing in the area my school does really bad in, so I hope I can change the tradition…

As I said above, school has been crazy lately. This has had it’s negative effects on Threadbound. When I do have time to code, I’m working on my client’s website, which I got sometime after my last post, or I’m doing coding for thunder-it.com. Today, I’ve been hit with a new block of inspiration and ideas for threadbound, so hopefully I can make some time to work on it. The stuff I came up with today is definitely new for the area I plan to implement it in.

For those of you still not quite sure about this whole Web 2.0 thing, check out the video below. It’s the best one I’ve ever seen that describes how I feel about it.

The Kenwood Apple Store was true to their word, they called me the day they came in. I ended up getting to the store around 6:30-7pm and it was packed. These things must be selling like hotcakes because I know they sold 3 of them while we were waiting on the cashier to see if they had any 2gb ram sticks in stock — which they didn’t. So I’m still 1gb of ram short until my reserved stick comes in. They do have a nice deal going right now though. You can get an HP Photosmart C3180 printer for free with your MacBook if you are buying it on a college discount. You have to pay upfront, but you get a rebate for the full price of the printer, similar to how they were running the iPod deals.

So far my experience of moving from Linux to OSX has been pretty grand, as I hinted at above. The built in wireless coupled with my new WRT45G, that I hadn’t tested the wireless on, seem to be working much better than my old setup. It’s so nice having wireless again, no cat5 cable to get tangled up in my mouse. Application-wise, I have already found a replacement for everything I used on Linux. I knew all of these before I even owned a Mac though, since I talk to/code with a few people that own a mac.

Heck, in the three days I’ve had this thing, I’ve already spent $50 in software. I bought textmate since it appears to be the best coding text editor on the planet for the mac and web 2.0 crew. I’m definitely liking it so far, but I’m on the hunt for PHP plugins now. They are a bit saturated with Ruby plugins. ;) I still need to get a legal copy of Photoshop CS2 for this box though. If only it was cheaper…

I’ve also had the joy of being able to run a lot of my favorite Linux applications on this thing. Fink is quite a nice system. I already have X11 running at startup, without that stupid xterm. I’ve modified my shell settings so everything I need to start X apps from Terminal.app is there and ready to go. I suggest all of you go out and install Xdroplets. Combined with this custom X11 setup and Xdroplets, I have a pretty standard application interface for running my old applications, such as XMMS or Konqueror for testing.

To give you some idea of how fast this laptop is, I have two benchmarks for you. While I was writing this post, I started a compile of Apache 2.0.59 to start setting up my development environment for ThreadBound. Here are the command that I ran:

$ ./configure
$ export MAKEOPTS=”-j6″
$ time make

What are the results? Astounding, considering this is a 10-20 minute compile on my old Athlon64 3200+ laptop…

real 1m37.240s
user 0m53.671s
sys 0m37.242s

The other benchmark is from when I installed Windows XP on my friend’s MacBook Pro, which is identical to the one I bought. After installing Counter-Strike: Source, we ran the video stress test. These machines averaged 114 FPS on it. This test set all of the settings on high, so we tried it. We were getting about 60-90 FPS at 1680×1050 during games. This just goes to show you the performance of this machine. Considering that people don’t know that the x1600 graphics cards they ship with are underclocked by around 45% below what ATI ships them as, due to heat. So I’m going to have to overclock them a bit and see how it does.

Here is a nice picture of my MacBook Pro:

Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo Opening Hosted on Zooomr

More pictures of it can be found here.

So we’ve all seen the disasters of pages created by millions of teenagers (like myself :/ ), that are impossible to read or even look at without giving yourself a seizure. To top all of that off, they have annoying flash ads that even talk without a mute button. So, today I set out to get rid of them and create my own, special, page.

First off, here is a screenshot for you to drool over:

moo Hosted on Zooomr

So to start, the first thing I did was see if I could escape the tables. Once I did this, I knew I could get rid of the ads and every other piece of junk I could. So in the About Me section, I had the following:

</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</table>

This allowed me to get out of the table-hell layout that is myspace.com, but I had to do one thing to make it not display the rest of the page. I had to reopen the tables. Code is below:

<table>
<tbody>
<tr><td>

Knowing this, I just added the CSS/HTML and images that can be found in the zip below to the About Me section.

Click here to download the zip file.
Click here to see the myspace live.

I hope that helps some of you.

NOTE: This *WILL* violate your agreement to the Myspace.com Terms of Service. Until they allow the iframe, we have no way to show their ads.