| George Hotz | |
|---|---|
| Born | George Francis Hotz October 2, 1989 Glen Rock, New Jersey, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | geohot, million75, mil, dream hax0r |
| Alma mater | Bergen County Academies |
George Francis Hotz (born October 2, 1989), alias geohot, million75 or simply mil, is an American hacker known for unlocking the iPhone, allowing the phone to be used with other wireless carriers, contrary to AT&T and Apple's intent.[1][2] He is also noted for hacking the PlayStation 3 and subsequently being sued by Sony.
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Hotz grew up in Glen Rock, New Jersey, the son of Marie Minichiello and George Hotz.[3] He attended the Bergen County Academies, a magnet public high school. He was in AEDT (Academy for Engineering and Design Technology).[4] Hotz is an alumnus of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth program.
Additionally, George Hotz attended the Rochester Institute of Technology for a short period of time. He started his major as a Biotechnology - Bioinformatics option major in August 2007, but withdrew from the institution soon after.
According to Hotz's blog, he traded his unlocked 8 GB iPhone to Terry Daidone, the founder of Certicell, for a Nissan 350Z and three 8 GB iPhones.[5] Hotz said he wanted to give the iPhones to the other members of the team who created the hack with him.[6] Hotz's hardware based unlocking technique has largely been replaced by software unlocking that does not require dis-assembly of the iPhone.[7] On February 8, 2008, Hotz developed the software unlock for the iPhone's new Bootloader Version 4.6 that was previously only achievable with a "testpoint based hardware unlock".[8] On July 3, 2009, Hotz announced purplera1n, the first public software exploit for jailbreaking the iPhone 3GS. Details were posted on his blog.[9]
On October 13, 2009, at 3:20AM Hotz released blackra1n, a jailbreak for all iPhones and iPod Touches. The only caveat was that the iPod touch third generation would need a "tethered jailbreak" to work. On October 30, 2009, Hotz released Blackra1n RC2, an update to his previous blackra1n utility. This version allows MC Model iPod Touch 2G (8 GB iPod Touch, third generation) and new-bootrom iPhone 3GS users to jailbreak their iPod touches as well. (tethered jailbreak only)[10] On October 31, 2009, Hotz announced the impending release of Blackra1n RC3, this version to include blacksn0w which would allow SIM unlock of all iPhones using Blacksn0w RC1.[11] Blacksn0w was originally scheduled for release on November 4, 2009, but due to positive test results it was moved to the 3rd. Blacksn0w was the #1 trending topic on Twitter as requested by GeoHot only moments after its release.
On March 27, 2010, Hotz established a website for his newest jailbreak software, limera1n.[12] Limera1n was rumored to be his newest jailbreaking tool and was released, however, it was later found that Hotz registered another domain at the same time, rubyra1n.com.[13] It is still unknown if rubyra1n will ever be released. On June 24, 2010, Hotz wrote on Twitter that he had no plans to release a new jailbreak. He has told people looking for a jailbreak release to 'keep an eye on Spirit,[14] the currently used program for 3.1.x jailbreaking, which led to the belief there are plans to update the software to allow iOS 4.0 jailbreaking. This however has not had a release date confirmed.[15] On July 10, 2010, Hotz published that he had been able to jailbreak an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.0. As evidence, he provided a picture of the device executing Cydia. This post has since been edited and blocked from public view, in which Hotz stated that the picture was "quite obviously fake", addressing himself to "the haters". On July 13, 2010, Hotz announced his retirement from iDevices hacking, saying that it's not fun as it used to be, and people were taking too serious something he used to do just as a distraction.[16]
On October 8, 2010, Hotz confirmed he was releasing a Jailbreak on 10/11/10; one day after the release of GreenPois0n. He also posted a picture of limera1n running on an iPhone 3G S, iPod Touch fourth generation, iPhone 4 and on the iPad. On October 9, 2010, Hotz released limera1n Beta 1 – without support for the 3GS (due to a problem with the bootrom). Additionally, the exploit has been found to be moderately buggy, even on supported devices.[12] This suspended the release of the SHAtter exploit in the form of greenpois0n, due for release the next day. On the limera1n website, he claims this was to make the Chronic Dev team "do the right thing" – presumably implying that they should save their jailbreak exploit for fifth generation devices. He later went on to release three more betas, containing support for iPhone 3GS models, along with various bug fixes and other stability enhancements. On October 11, 2010, Hotz released what appears to be the final version of his jailbreak (RC1b).[12] Hotz also put on his website that the Mac version of this jailbreak is "coming in 7 years", but was released about 2 weeks later.
Towards the end of 2009, Hotz announced his efforts to hack the Sony PlayStation 3,[17] a console widely regarded as being the only fully locked and secure system of the seventh generation era. Hotz opened a blog to document his progress, and five weeks later, on January 22, 2010, he announced that he had successfully hacked the machine by enabling himself read and write access to the machine's system memory and having hypervisor level access to the machine's processor.[18][19] Hotz detailed functions that his work could allow, such as homebrew and PlayStation 2 emulation (a feature removed by Sony in newer revisions of the console to tackle production costs).[20] On January 26, 2010, Hotz released the exploit to the public. It was done on the original firmware (OFW) 3.15, then using his codes he made it into a 3.15 CFW, or Custom Firmware. It requires the OtherOS function of the machine, and consists of a Linux kernel module and gaining control of the machine's hypervisor via bus glitching.[21] Hotz wrote that "Sony may have difficulty patching the exploit". On March 28, 2010, Sony responded by announcing their intention to release a PlayStation 3 firmware update that would remove the OtherOS feature from all models,[22] a feature that was already absent on the newer Slim revisions of the machine. Hotz then announced plans of a custom firmware, similar to the custom firmware for the PlayStation Portable, to enable Linux and OtherOS support, while still retaining the features of newer firmwares.
On April 7, 2010, Hotz posted a video on the internet detailing his claimed progress with custom firmware on the machine, and showing a PlayStation 3 running with the OtherOS feature enabled on firmware 3.21. He named his custom firmware as 3.21OO, and suggested that it may also work on newer Slim models of the console. However, he didn't announce a release date for the custom firmware or mention whether he was working on the same hack for the latest firmware version of 3.41.[23] It was never released. On July 13, 2010, Hotz posted a message on his Twitter account stating that he was giving up trying to crack the PS3 any further.[24] However, on January 2, 2011, he posted the root keys of the PlayStation 3 on his website.[25] These keys were later removed from his website as a result of legal action by Sony (see below).[26] On January 6, 2011, he showed a demo of running homebrew applications on PS3 firmware 3.55 without using any jailbreak USB dongles, based on the discovery of the security exploit by the fail0verflow team.[27] On January 7, 2011, he showed off a demo video running homebrew applications on PlayStation 3 custom firmware 3.55.[28] On January 11, 2011, Sony filed an application for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against Hotz in the US District Court of Northern California.[29] The timeline of the lawsuit is continued below. On January 14, 2011, Hotz appeared in an interview on G4′s The Loop, where he explained why he jailbroke the Sony PlayStation 3.[30]
After the root keys of the console were published, Sony took George Hotz to court. Subsequently Hotz has made a video on YouTube singing a song about the "disaster" of Sony. Sony in turn has demanded social media sites, including YouTube, to hand over IP addresses of people who visited Geohot's social pages and videos; the latter being the case only for those who "watched the video and 'documents reproducing all records or usernames and IP addresses that have posted or published comments in response to the video'".[31]
PayPal has granted Sony access to Geohot's PayPal account,[32] and the judge of the case granted Sony permission to view the IP addresses of everyone who visited geohot.com. In April 2011, it was revealed that Sony and Hotz had settled the lawsuit out of court, on the condition that Hotz would never again resume any hacking work on Sony products.[33]
At the end of April 2011, hackers broke into the PlayStation Network and stole personal information of some 77 million users. Hotz denied any responsibility for the attack, and said "Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool; hacking into someone else's server and stealing databases of user info is not cool".[31]
On June 27, 2011, it was reported[34] that Hotz had been hired by Facebook. However, according to a CNET[35] article, he had actually been employed since May, which was confirmed by Facebook. It is unknown what his role at the company is.
He was a finalist at the 2004 ISEF competition in Portland OR with his project "The Mapping Robot". Recognition included interviews on the Today Show and Larry King.[36] Hotz was a finalist at the 2005 ISEF competition, with his project "The Googler".[37] Continuing with robots, Hotz competed in his school's highly successful Titanium Knights battlebots team. George also worked on his project, "Neuropilot," in which he was able to read EEG signals off his head with hardware from the OpenEEG project.
Hotz competed in the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, a science competition for high school students, where his project, entitled "I want a Holodeck", received awards and prizes in several categories.[38] Hotz has received considerable attention in mainstream media, including interviews on the Today Show, Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, G4, ABC,[39] CNBC,[40] and articles in several magazines, newspapers, and websites, including Forbes,[41] and BBC.[42]
The Forbes article said Hotz hopes to go into Neuroscience: "hacking the brain," he called it. In March 2008, PC World magazine listed George as one of the top 10 Overachievers under 21.[43] He entered the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2007, quickly after gaining notoriety for hacking the iPhone, but withdrew from the school after 1 quarter. In December 2007, Hotz travelled to Sweden to attend the Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar and talk about his 3D imaging invention (called Project Holodeck) that netted him a $20,000 Intel scholarship earlier that year.[44] In 2008 he worked at Google as an intern, on the Google Street View project.