"DVD" Jon Lech Johansen has released Phone Activation Server which, with some technical knowledge, can be used to activate an iPhone without AT&T's involvement. Johansen says the result is that "The iPhone does not have phone capability, but the iPod and WiFi work."
Johansen's tool is for Windows only. Reports are circulating of other activation programs running on Mac OS X or Windows that require the use of a 'token' from an activated iPhone.
Where does that get you? Not very far, unless you just want the cachet of owning an iPhone and don't want to talk on it. For example, a visitor to the US might buy an iPhone associated with a prepaid AT&T account, cancel the service within the grace period, then take the iPhone home for use as a fancy iPod and Wi-Fi Internet terminal.
But according to a PC World article, hackers are confident of finding within days a way to unlock the iPhone so it can be used with other carriers.
The story quoted someone involved in these efforts (identified only as "gj") as saying "We are privately aware many of the iPhone engineers came from other handset manufacturers, and we understand their design techniques fairly well."
If you're interested in this sort of thing, the iPhone Dev Wiki might be worth a visit.
The Register reports activity on several fronts, including a buffer overflow vulnerability in Safari (shared with the Windows version) that could allow the execution of arbitrary code (eg, to automatically dial premium-rate numbers), a Bluetooth-based Denial of Service attack, and the discovery of the password giving root access.
A software update for the iPhone is expected this week, and it could undo some of the work already completed to loosen the restrictions on the device.
