For those of you who have been waiting long enough, there is a new unlocking method in town, which achieves a full unlock using only a Turbo SIM card. Gevey has released a SIM Interposer/Turbo SIM claiming to unlock your iPhone 4 on basebands such as 02.10.04 and 03.10.01, by force activating the baseband using the emergency dialer. A blogpost by Laforet explains that the SIM Interposer works by adding an EEPROM chip to your SIM card just like a TuboSIM. You then have to call 112, a number that can be called from any GSM phone, free of charge, with or without a SIM card on a compliant network. Once te call connects, you hang up, then toggle Airport mode on and off. When the network connection resumes, you will be fully unlocked. What is Gevey Turbo SIM The Gevey Turbo SIM is actually a thin card that squeezes alongside your actual SIM card to run the exploit. It spoofs your AT&T IMSI number and authentication key (Ki) supplied by the SIM card to the network for misguiding the iPhone, then your card IMSI is used for network connection. The card can be used on any mobile network (such as T-Mobile) with which they are technically compatible (obviously not any CDMA phones because they don’t have SIM cards). Turbo SIM copies the information from your AT&T SIM card and then switches it to your AT&T SIM for your carrier SIM. This method allows the Turbo SIM to append on your carrier SIM, and gives you full calling and SMS capabilities. It doesn’t require any complicated hardware or card readers. It is also important to note that Apple could easily invalidate this hack with a firmware update. Is Turbo SIM Method Legit or Fake? This isn’t a new iPhone unlocking method and it actually carriers a history behind it. In 2007, an Australian iPhone hacker, ozbimmer, successfully unlocked the iPhone using  Turbo SIM and managed to get an iPhone to work on the Telstra network. A few months later, on February 8, 2008, GeoHot developed the free software unlock for the iPhone’s Bootloader Version 4.6. Since then, most iPhone users have been relying on GeoHot or the iPhone Dev Team for unlocking their devices. We can now safely assume that the Gevey Turbo SIM might unlock your iPhone 4 as well. The team even posted a video demonstrating the full iPhone 4 unlock on baseband 02.10.04 and 03.10.01. Reactions of Hacker Community The hacker community has had a positive reaction toward the use of the Turbo SIM as well. MuscleNerd of the iPhone Dev Team has not completely denied the credibility of Gevey’s SIM. According to him, in 2007, Turbo SIM was a nice programmable SIM interposer board with a long / mixed history with the iPhone. Unlike software unlocking methods such as UltraSn0w, the SIM Interposers can take advantage of bugs in the SIM Toolkit (STK). He concluded saying that hardware SIM Interposers can’t use any bugs that they can, and they can’t use any bugs the Interposers can. Gevey Turbo SIM Pricing and Availability The Gevey Turbo SIM is available from ApplenBerry on March 18 or 21, shipping everywhere except China. There is no priccing available for the Gevey Turbo SIM just yet – it will be determined on launch date which again, should be on March 18 or March 21. Buy Gevey Turbo SIM or wait for Ultrasn0w? Unlike UltraSn0w which is free, this piggyback SIM card will cost you probably anywhere between $20 and $40. Currently the iPhone Dev Team is hard at work to bruteforce crack the unique 40-bit NCK key on the device by this upcoming weekend, which can then be used to unlock the iPhone 4 permanently. We would advise everyone to wait for the iPhone Dev Team’s statement before going ahead with this purchase. What does it mean to unlockers? 1. It works if: Your network handles 112 calls properly according to the GSM standard; They are tolerant to TSMI spoofing and does not actively validate your SIM again for incoming calls. 2. Unlike its ancestors, the i4 SIM interposer is not a drop-in-and-forget device. The exact precedure must be performed should the device restart, lose reception for an extended period of time or move to another PLMN. In all these situations the TMSI expires and has to be obtained again. Theoretically it is possible for a daemon to automate the process similar to ZeroG, but that only makes thing more convoluted. 3. It is, without question, unethical or downright illegal to use the technique anywhere 112 is a legitmate emergency number. Not a huge issue in China where the number is only used for informative purposes and the networks cannot be bothered to fix the issue. 4. All firmware/baseband combinations for the i4 up to iOS4.3 are vulnerable, however the exploit may be patched in any future software updates or via the carrier. If apple can influence providers to block Cydia it is not impossible for them to press them to fix the exploit. The only way to permanently unlock your baseband is NCK. 5. SIM interposer should not harm your phone hardware, however your network could request IMEI and identify your device during the emergency call. Your identity cannot be faked and it is possible that they will ban your account. There is a reason why SIM cards remain legally the property of the service provider: you are not supposed to tamper with them without breaching contract. 6. Notwithstanding all the problems, SIM interposer does not cause any battery drain since it is only active transiently, nor would it cause signal loss because it does not change cellular transmission other than the initial validation step. Stay tuned for more news and info on this topic by following us on Twitter and/or by subscribing to our RSS Feed. Related Posts: Authors:

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