Jailbreaker Decides to Move to Windows Phone 7, Microsoft Delighted

[Scott Bullock]

Jailbreaker Decides to Move to Windows Phone 7, Microsoft Delighted

In a tweet earlier today, Microsoft seemed to encourage hacker Geohot to try his hand at jailbreaking Windows Phone 7.

George Hotz, better known as Geohot, the hacker famed for being the first to jailbreak the iPhone and his involvement in hacking the PS3, may be moving to the Windows Phone 7 scene.

Hotz is currently embroiled in a lawsuit brought against him by Sony over his release of the Root Keys of the PS3. Before that, he spent years jailbreaking whatever the most recent iPhone updates were, keeping on top of Apple's attempt to take back control of its devices. To say he's had rocky relationships with tech companies is an understatement. Apparently, he's had enough with the way he's been treated.

Yesterday he posted a link to an Engadget article [http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/18/visualized-the-glamorous-lifestyles-of-wp7-jailbreakers/] about how well Microsoft has been treating their budding hacker community, meeting with them personally and giving them snazzy t-shirts, and a post calling it "perhaps a more appropriate way to deal with jailbreakers," and going on to say "I'm going out to buy a Windows 7 phone."

Whether that was a joke or not, Microsoft took note.

Brandon Watson, Director of Developer Experience for Windows Phone, got on Twitter only hours later and posted the above Tweet.

In late November last year, hacker team CheveronWP7 released a semi-jailbreak of the Windows Phone, which allowed for the running of homebrew applications. They were contacted by Microsoft, and after a frank discussion, were thanked for pointing out a hole in the phone's security, which has now been fixed.

That, along with the tweet to Geohot, seems to point towards a very hacker-friendly Microsoft. Perhaps it sees it as a way of drawing more users to the Windows Phone 7, or maybe it just wants to take advantage of the good PR this friendly policy will get the company.

I could use a new phone. Maybe I should threaten to hack a Windows Phone, too.

Source: DRS via N4G [http://n4g.com/news/683029/microsoft-welcomes-geohot-with-open-arms-looking-forward-to-a-wp7-jailbreak]




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[therandombear]

You could try and tell them that you are going to hack it, but I think they want more proof then that xD

Maybe geohot has tonics from Bioshock, hacker's friend and hypnosis :3

 

[pulse2]

It's nice to know that Microsoft is trying to skip all the hassle Sony is going through, even if this is a PR stunt to get more of our monies by acting as if they gladly accept hacking.

Either way, I wish Microsoft would adopt the same mindset on flexibility with developers with XBL, quite often it only misses out on things because of the tight restrictions

 

[ewhac]

Cue Admiral Akbar clip.

Personally I think he's wasting his time. Anyone who willingly buys a WinCE-based phone is an idiot, and deserves to be locked in to whatever childish nonsense Microsoft and the carrier have imposed. The only reason I'd ever want to jailbreak a Windows-based phone is to install Android on it.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Well now I feel better about hacking my copy of Windows 7 to accept my product key when I moved hard drives.

Cue Admiral Akbar clip.

Personally I think he's wasting his time. Anyone who willingly buys a WinCE-based phone is an idiot, and deserves to be locked in to whatever childish nonsense Microsoft and the carrier have imposed. The only reason I'd ever want to jailbreak a Windows-based phone is to install Android on it.

I didn't know Win Phone 7 was based on CE.

EDIT: Looking it up it is. Learn something new every day.

 

[Guru Cube]

In fairness, they should all take the path that Palm are taking with their Pre and Pixi smartphones. They openly promotes development mode, homebrew apps, and patches. The Pre is the most versatile phone I've ever had. It is pretty much 'unbrickable' and adding any patches and homebrew doesn't affect the warranty.

Apple, Microsoft and other could take a leaf out of their book!!

 

[RogueDarkJedi]

It's nice to know that Microsoft is trying to skip all the hassle Sony is going through, even if this is a PR stunt to get more of our monies by acting as if they gladly accept hacking.

Either way, I wish Microsoft would adopt the same mindset on flexibility with developers with XBL, quite often it only misses out on things because of the tight restrictions

Except the problem with XBL is that you pay for it. That said, people believe that since they pay for it, they must be treated with quality service (fair advantages, hacking and whatever). Even so, MS already has to spend time with the people who mod their consoles, if jailbreaking was more open, MS would have to spend even more time to monitor the progress. Plus, what exactly would you jailbreak for anyways? If you want to run homebrew, you have XNA. You can already install games. You can already sync media with your computer and xbox. The only thing I can see is if you want to replace the dashboard, but that's rather pointless.

Now if we are talking about Indie Games, some restrictions make sense. Indie Games are not judged or reviewed by MS prior to their release. They are voted upon by the XNA community. I can understand MS forbidding IG achievements, because the next thing you'll see is a bunch of people making incredibly cheap IG that give you a bunch of achievements for starting it. Other than that, I don't know of any other restrictions IG have (other than no DLC, which makes some sense, but it's a rather pointless policy).

 

[Low Key]

Letting people like GeoHot jailbreak their phones is not only great promo, but it also saves them money in the back end of development and testing. They don't have to pay someone tens of thousands of dollars to do it when the hacker elite in the general public will be more than happy to do it for free.

 

[Exort]

This is how you do PR. Activision, EA take some notes from Valve and Microsoft phone development team.

 

[The Random One]

Looks like Microsoft finally discovered which company they should copy if they want people to stop think of them as souless profit hoarders. It's Google. The answer is Google.

Captcha is Entry, Meseavol - also the name of my new novel.

 

[OniaPL]

This just feels like Microsoft is giving a big fat middle finger to Sony.

 

[lacktheknack]

...Why did Microsoft bother "putting it in jail" to begin with, then?

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

My guess is that they want to know the holes being public, and good relations with hackers will make it more likely that they can know how to plug those holes.

I would cut the crap and start hiring these guys to find ways to jail break your devices so you can cover as many holes as possible before you launch anything.

 

[Danpascooch]

Sounds like brilliant marketing if they are taking the approach I THINK they are.

They could have made the phone completely open from the start, but people would just say "that's been done" and root a droid.

Or they could allow it to be Jailbroken, giving people that thrill of "I'm doing something Microsoft doesn't want me to" while having the same result. So many people disapprove of Microsoft these days, It makes me wonder if they are trying to turn that disapproval into a Windows phone by letting it be jailbroken.

Plus, think of all the free publicity the announcement of the hack will generate?

 

[HellspawnCandy]

This is the second thread I've seen with Microsoft opening their arms to hackers. I can't help but say good Microsoft, you're just making yourself look awesome and fixing bugs in software. Poor Sony.

 

[esperandote]

I think MS is just doing the opposite that Sony does

 

[Low Key]

Sounds like brilliant marketing if they are taking the approach I THINK they are.

They could have made the phone completely open from the start, but people would just say "that's been done" and root a droid.

Or they could allow it to be Jailbroken, giving people that thrill of "I'm doing something Microsoft doesn't want me to" while having the same result. So many people disapprove of Microsoft these days, It makes me wonder if they are trying to turn that disapproval into a Windows phone by letting it be jailbroken.

Plus, think of all the free publicity the announcement of the hack will generate?

I think they are allowing it to happen because, and this is my personal opinion here, they foresee these smart phones as the new laptop. They are always with you and you can pretty much do anything on them. Intel keeps pushing out smaller, more powerful processors, and with the Sandy Bridge series, the processors even come with integrated graphics. Not to mention flash memory which is incredibly tiny, yet the drive space is constantly growing. In the next 10-15 years, who knows what our cell phones will be capable of.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

It's nice to know that Microsoft is trying to skip all the hassle Sony is going through, even if this is a PR stunt to get more of our monies by acting as if they gladly accept hacking.

Either way, I wish Microsoft would adopt the same mindset on flexibility with developers with XBL, quite often it only misses out on things because of the tight restrictions

It isn't that they gladly accept hacking. The history of security (in any form) demonstrates the fundamental a fundamental truth: any defense can be breached. By embracing the community, they have a chance of heading off problems that would actually harm the development community (hacks that make playing pirated software simpler than spending a few dollars on a program as an example) while encouraging the good and creative things that comes with a robust hacking community.

I can't be the only person to think that the stuff hackers have done with the Kinect is far more interesting than the crap they actually market for the product.

I think MS is just doing the opposite that Sony does

Honestly, at this point, that seems like a pretty good plan.

 

[Danpascooch]

Sounds like brilliant marketing if they are taking the approach I THINK they are.

They could have made the phone completely open from the start, but people would just say "that's been done" and root a droid.

Or they could allow it to be Jailbroken, giving people that thrill of "I'm doing something Microsoft doesn't want me to" while having the same result. So many people disapprove of Microsoft these days, It makes me wonder if they are trying to turn that disapproval into a Windows phone by letting it be jailbroken.

Plus, think of all the free publicity the announcement of the hack will generate?

I think they are allowing it to happen because, and this is my personal opinion here, they foresee these smart phones as the new laptop. They are always with you and you can pretty much do anything on them. Intel keeps pushing out smaller, more powerful processors, and with the Sandy Bridge series, the processors even come with integrated graphics. Not to mention flash memory which is incredibly tiny, yet the drive space is constantly growing. In the next 10-15 years, who knows what our cell phones will be capable of.

Everything you said is true.....but you forgot the part where any of that information is a reason for Microsoft to allow people to jailbreak their phone...