Update: Roadblock; The future of Anthrax

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:05:00 -0400

I am here, bearing rather unfortunate news… my iPod has reached the end of the duration of its life. I’m not quite sure where to go from here; what my projects will become, what I’ll be able to work on, etc. Without a device for testing, It’s difficult to rely on others to test my code, especially since not many know how to debug what I’m doing(hence the entire point of simplifying the process with this toolkit). Even when I can find those who do know what they’re doing, the process of relaying binaries, code, logs, etc, back and forth, takes much more time than testing it myself. While I’m looking for a better solution, I’ll continue to have people assist me in debugging, as I do not want this project to die; its potential is massive.

The better solution? Well, I’ve opened a ChipIn

Here

If you could please, just throw in a little bit, here and there, every cent counts. I’m trying to get a newer iDevice so that I may continue on my journey to develop this branch of greenpois0n and proceed in my endeavors in this community. I really would appreciate it.

With Respect,

John Heaton(Gojohnnyboi)

Current Work and Greenpoison

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:14:02 -0400

Hey everyone,

I thought I’d take the time to write a brief progress update. In the paste days, I’ve taken quite a bit of time to work on Anthrax, a cool ramdisk kit coming in greenpois0n. I’ve created a small Makefile for you OS X users so that you may build the ramdisk(which actually does nothing yet) and test it out.

Some things I have done with it:

Figured out the correct image format for the dmg
Figured out the correct ownership/permissions for the fake “launchd” program
Started work on reversing restored_external and other ramdisk utilities to figure out how to set up and mount disks, edit nvram variables, and host the device in a usbmux connection.

Along with reversing restored_external(Apple’s iPhone restore ramdisk server program), I’ve started to create my own reversed implementation of it on my GitHub account(see link below). This could be useful in the future, as it could simplify restores in the future, allowing for easier written restore programs(other than iTunes, such as idevicerestore), and perhaps helping to bypass Apple’s annoying signature checks on things.

Coming with 4.0, Apple seems to be laying on even MORE attempts to banish us from booting ramdisks. A sad attempt, yet still annoying. They’ve removed the commands needed to decrypted/setup/boot the ramdisk in iBoot(and perhaps iBSS), leaving it only in iBEC, which is sent to bootstrap the restore from iTunes.

As always, you can tweet me on Twitter, username Gojohnnyboi with questions, or if you want to contribute at all.

With respect,

John

restored_pwn

Greepois0n’s Anthrax Ramdisk Kit