$US100,000 bounty offered for iPhone unlocking software

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 29 August 2007 12:46

Your IT - Mobility

An offer of $US100,000 has been made to any of the groups that claim to have a working, software-only method of unlocking the iPhone.
The offer is purportedly been put on the table by some "friends [who] are very involved in the open source community", according to FreeiPhoneForMoney.

The people offering the reward - identified only by a Gmail address -  say "We are willing to pay $100,000 USD and make it [the unlocking software] freely available with the owner's approval and all the credits given to the creator. We will also give you control of a domain and release it on Wednesday night at 12:00am".

The rationale behind the bounty is that it may not be legal under US law to charge someone to unlocking their mobile phone or to sell tools or instructions. If someone with a working method was to make it freely available, it might be a different story. The $US100,000 would mean the people who did all the work get something for their labours - and any iPhones they rendered useless in the process.

Assuming it is a genuine offer.

It could easily be a simple hoax. Or - if you like conspiracy theories - it could be a ruse to flush out the people behind the hacks in order to take legal action against them with a view to preventing the release of their software.

It's not long until midnight, so we shouldn't have to wait long for some answers.