Objects in Flux - RMIT Research Repository - RMIT University

out of the products they own and locks them
into authorized maintenance and repair channels.
When a product fails, the consumer often
has little choice but to follow the manufacturer’s
prescribed replacement or repair plan. Of course,
not all consumers are perturbed by these control
measures; after all, nothing gets a hacker’s attention
like a locked door.
6.9 iPodLinux
Nils Schneider (screen name nilss) was part of the
‘iPodLinux’ development team, a group of hobbyists
who had set themselves the task of installing the Linux open source
operating system onto the iPod personal music player. 13 The team had
been successful in getting Linux to run on the first three generations of
iPod but the fourth – generation iPod was proving difficult. The issue
concerned the bootloader, a small piece of software that is loaded from
flash memory when the iPod starts up (boots) and which, in turn, loads
the more complex iPod operating system from the iPod’s hard drive.
Understanding the bootloader was essential to understanding how to
gain access to the hard drive, display, clickwheel and other hardware.
This had been achieved for previous iPods by extracting the bootloader
code from the iPod firmware image, a file distributed by Apple so that
users could update and restore their iPods. With the release of the fourth
generation iPod this was no longer possible because for the first time
Apple had encrypted the bootloader code contained within the firmware
image. In order to proceed, the iPodLinux developers needed access to
an unencrypted version of the new bootloader. One place they could find
this was in the flash memory chip of a running iPod (the iPod decrypts
the bootloader before running it). The question was, how do you read
a file from the iPod’s memory when you have no idea how that file is
controlling the iPod’s hardware? Without access to the iPod’s screen or
serial ports there seemed to be no way to get the bootloader code out of
the iPod.
Shortly after Christmas 2004 Schneider thought he may have a solution.
He had been experimenting with a piece of code given to him
by Bernard Leach (screen name leachbj), another member of the
Stategies of Control and Tactics of Use
[Figure 6-8]
Insulated recording studio (cardboard
box) by Nils Schneider, 2004.
Photograph Schneider.
13/ http://www.ipodlinux.org/ ac-
cessed 22 May 2008.
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