Warning Against Using Ziphone

BigBoss BigBoss has written an article warning against the use of Ziphone. Below is what he has to say:

Question:
Could you please elaborate on the permanent changes caused by Ziphone? All unlocking/jailbreaking methods modify the phone in some way, at least they patch baseband, and pwnage patches bootloader. I know that Ziphone downgrades the 4.6 bootloader to 3.9 (which has been thought to be permanent until pwnage came out), but so does iLiberty+, iDemocracy and any other unlock method that is not based on pwnage.

Answer:
First off, iLiberty+ does not downgrade your bootloader by default. It downgrades you to 3.9 fakeblank which is easily reversible and not dangerous. This is not the same thing as 3.9 used by Ziphone! Ziphone downgrades the bootloader to 3.9 automatically. If this process fails, you’re done. This process considered so risky that Apple does not do any bootloader upgrades in their firmware packages! They could have put a stop to all the unlocks when 1.1.2 came out by having the 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 firmware upgrade upgrade old bootloaders to 4.6 but they considered this too risky and did not do it! Ziphone does it anyway.

Zibri has had so many releases that fix “type-o’s”. That’s just silly. The code is so sloppy and buggy. Some versions will unlock even when you did not ask it to resulting in a downgraded bootloader just on a request to jailbreak! Neat :(

Ziphone is also very dangerous because it does all the flashing (most risky part) during the first phase of the ram disk. During this phase, allocating too much memory can result in ram disk corruption. This is very bad. You want to minimize the amount of memory used as much as possible and you only care about stability. Ziphone doesn’t worry about this. Due to the technique used to boot the ramdisk, the memory is easily corrupted if you try to allocate too much of it. The result is that you are corrupting the very data that you are flashing!

iLiberty+, iPlus both use a smaller ram disk to flash. This minimizes the amount of memory used and takes great care to prevent memory allocations from corrupting the ram disk. Then these tools come back on a second pass to install payloads. This is done after the flashing is done where there is no risk.

As a result, several ziphone users have reported problems with no edge, no wifi, no bluetooth or a combination of the 3. In many cases this is unfixable. Zibri has added a wifi “fix” to his app which works sometimes, but this programs a bogus network address that is the same on every phone.

You can read the entire article at sleepers.net.

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Comments

  1. Sahil Arora says

    i knew ziphone was full of crap and now i know why

    • Finally the dangers and problems with ZiPhone are revealed to the masses.

    • That’t the issue….
      you are hate the guy bcos he stole from greed Coders…
      Not that Ziphone is bad.

      I unlocked mine with Ziphone… I bootloader remains the same.
      Just say you don’t like the Guy.. I will believe…that.

    • Brooke,
      In good faith delete this post….
      It is nothing but a bad campaign amongst developers.
      All the Unlocking tools have issues.

      I respect you guys and what you have going here. This is bad and has no place on your website unless you want to be the TMZ of Iphones.

    • completely agree with jo… The post should not be on here. I enjoy this site unbiased.

    • I have never had any problem with Ziphone and have used it on loads of friends iphones.

    • agreed as well, complete bias review by BigBoss and completely shows a bias by this being posted on this typically unbiased site. Especially with the article title of “Warning Against Using Ziphone”… tsk tsk.

    • I`ve started a Poll on mactechnews.de and 88% of the now 51 voters have had no Problems with ZiPhone until now. So i can`t understand the warning. I think most of the problems are based in “not reading the tutorials” or using other Programs first and then ZiPhone and so on. If you`re interested, take a look at the Poll, here`s the Link to it:

      http://www.mactechnews.de/forum/thread.html?id=261682&page=2

    • Sahil Arora says

      it clearly says ziphone works most of the time but it has it dangers, its just like a warning on a pack of smokes, I know the dangers of smoking so i dont smoke, a smoker knows the dangers of smoking but he does not stop smoking!? In the same way we all know the hazzards of ziphone and those who want to use it will, as for me, iLiberty and winpwn are what i will use.

      zibri himself said he is a bad coder and if the creater of ziphone says it might have bad coding then he himself is warning us of a substandard product. Use it or not this should stay up just like cigi warnings all over the place

  2. maddcatt says

    I used Ziphone (3.0) on both of my iphones and they work great. The one in front of me shows the bootloader as 4.6, not sure of the other as it just recently got stolen from my daughter. I’m not saying that Ziphone is the best or not, as I have only used it (3 time now) and never had a problem. I only give this as info that my bootloader is still 4.6 not 3.9.

    PS. Both phone were jailbroken, but only one was unlocked.

    • Paul D. Spradling says

      Is the one that has BL4.6 the one that’s not unlocked?…
      If so then there’s your answer.

    • So is Ziphone safe for the Touch ? I used version 3.0 to ulouck my 32Gb and it *appears* to be OK, despite me loosing a couple of icons.

    • Sahil Arora says

      jailbreaking has nothing to do with bootloader therefore ur BL will not change, unlocking flashes the bl and so the bl of the unlocked phone will be 3.9

      and no ziphone is not safe for the touch
      search hackint0sh

    • maddcatt says

      Thanks for the info. Is it safe to use for jailbreaking if your not going to unlock your phone?

  3. Paul michel says

    well I’ m very septic about this article I allways use ziphine and iliberty and sometimes both on the same iPhone and never never had any problems neither with iliberty some toe
    I unlocked a 1.1.3 with ziphine then upgrade it and unlocked with zphone and have no problems everything work like a charm! Or some time in the other way I all ready unlock 245 iPhones here in Mexico and any client come back with any problem on the contrary they came back for more! I’m don’t know if we have to belive this article! I’ really septic!

    • Paul D. Spradling says

      Dude, if you’re unlocking a lot of iPhones it would be easier to Pwn them and restore to a custom firmware.

    • If you’re skeptical, I don’t know if this help,. but I second this 100%. I have been advising poeple against using ziphone since the beginning of ziphone.

      –Skylar

  4. have used ziphone to unlock…. no big issues so far.

  5. hi.
    Im not sure but some of the other methods are based on ziphone 2.0 right?

    • no, they use the same method. but are not based on ziphone.

    • i have had try iplus, iLiberty+, pwnage and winpwn and for my xperience ziphone is the most stable method i have had try and never fails..

      :)

  6. Whatever u say mate.. Zibri is always the 1st one to come up with solutions to all the problems.. And all the people who are talking trash about him right now will surely turn to ziphone when he unlocks the 3g iphone..
    I’ve never had any problems

    • Zibri is the 1st? I’m afraid you need a bit of a history lesson. Zibri’s entire jailbreak career is based upon the work of countless others; work he stole, then gave no credit for. Just because you’ve never had problems, doesn’t mean no one ever has. Ziphone is Dangerous.

    • That’t the issue….you are agree he stole from greed Coders… Not that Ziphone is bad.
      I unlocked mine with Ziphone… I bootloader remains the same.
      Just say you don’t like the Guy.. I will believe…that.

  7. I have unlocked more than 30 iphones with Ziphone and none of them have had any problem at all, how come after all this time using this unlocking comes someone to tell us is that is risky?. I simply do not believe that.

  8. what can I do , if I already used ZiPhone to unlock and jailbreak my iphone? With pwnage I should be able to make everything like it was before and maybe I can use it to update to 2.0, when it’s finaly there.

  9. aalanskrazyworld says

    I never had any problems with it, my phone was 1.0.2 OTB but I unlocked an 1.1.2 OTB for my friend and like after a month it kinda broke… Then I kept
    getting that “apple
    repair needed” message!

  10. I agree with most of you. I’ve used Ziphone to repeatedly jailbreak my iPhone. I’ve recommended it to all my iPhone using friends. For my purposes it has a 100% success rate. What gives?

  11. pwnage works the best. Least lethal with the most features.

  12. can t see the point said now what ziphone does……… already 2 millions of iphone are using this program… i see a lot of hate about zibri at the moment around forum..

    ps my 1.1.4 goes so fast…. :)

  13. I have Unlocked my iPhone with Zibris ZiPhone and it works very well. I have no Problems with my iPhone. And i feel secure to Unlock the Firmware 2.0 with the next ZiPhone version as well.

  14. EvePineda02 says

    Well when I upgraded my phone recently to 1.1.4 (I know totally behind the time here) anyways I looked around to see what would be the best program to use and the first one that I tried was iliberty+ and to tell you the truth I really didn’t like it cause I had no installer maybe I did it wrong or something but I only had cydria (?) and that was not working for me cause I could not add sources therefore I could not get the programs I wanted plus it seem not to work as fast I had a lot of basic programs sticking… I go tired of it so, I went and unlocked it with Ziphone and have had no problems with it in fact my phone is now working faster then before… So in my opinion its really a hit or miss, for some people it will work and some will just have problems with it… and those people just need to try something eles….

    • Cydia is the default installer since it was created by the creator of iliberty themselves.you can choose to not include it by unchecking the box and if u want, u can check the iinstaller too. The problem with most people is that they don’t read instructions and how-to’s before doing stuffs and when something negative comes up they blame the program right away. A nation of whinners indeed.

  15. I think we should expect a reply from Zibri.
    It is better to hear both sides before judging. Don’t you think so?
    Take care
    Ar.

    • I fully agree. Send this to Zibri and let him reply. Zibri’s method is 99% success imo

  16. This is just silly. Im asking you why this article shows up at this point of time,though ziphone is out 4 ages???
    Well..you gotta b an idiot not to know. The release of iphone 3G..Firmware 2.0. This is just dissing. Everybody wanna be 1. to unlock 2.0..and it seems that zibri is on the right way. The other hacker’s fear,that Ziphone will be the most used programm to unlock
    the new iphones is the answer. This is big buisness!!

  17. I used to be an operator in Zibri’s support irc channel. We often found it IMPOSSIBLE to assist many users whose iPhones or iPod Touches had been rendered inoperable due to issues related with Ziphone. Zibri’s answer? “They must have used something else prior to ziphone.” Disputing this resulted in an immediate kick/ban.

    It’s nice to see this getting some attention, however in light of my experiences and many countless others, I’ve been advising against Ziphone’s use for months. Yes, it may work without issue, but it’s far to risky.

    At the moment, the only viable solution for Windows users is iLiberty. winpwn, while better than ziphone by far, has some stability issues in its current iteration, issues I hope its developer will address soon.

    • Well.. i think its and opinion… iLiberty+ have put my phone on deperate situations and the only tool that helped me to get back on track was ziphone…. let`s be objetive STOP the drama.
      The method works fast and good..it`s safe and Z always came first and that what it matters for me..
      I think this is getting to personal between dev`s… and i remember that long time ago Z was part of the dev´s team and back then was all was ok.?.. and now is risky…
      Sorry, nice try to put down the method but more that 3 millons phones are h_appy.. (like mine). And if someone comes with a better method i`ll probably try it… but i know ziphone its always arround to fix the other`s methods issues..

    • kvisions says

      I’m being quite objective, thanks. The fact is, as a support member of #ziphone on tux-irc, I was often stumped by greyed wifi, corrupted mac addresses, and many other issues that ziphone cause. I wasn’t alone in my inability to help these people; None of the other ops or helpers could either. Zibri himself refused to either address the problem, nor identify a fix for it. Fact is, it took iLiberty to give these bricked iphone users a way out; and even today it takes a fair bit of technical expertise to pull it off.

      It’s unfortunate that you and others wish to chalk this up to dev-team retribution; the truth is, this is anything but. Ziphone is dangerous; has been since 2.0, and recommending it is irresponsible. The evidence against it is solid and unrefuteable.

    • no kvision…
      we have to restore a thousand times bcos of bad apps from ur guys that dont test there apps looking for quick so called donations… We know who they are now.

    • Well the greyness wi-fi i hadit using iLibrety..
      its very odd dont you thing and im not put Dev´s works down i just said that someone with the + on the mIRC channel not the ziphone channel. Maked my phone got crazy after the intrution by ssh in that #iphone .. banning just because using ziphone method… and manny other abuses.. too much drama for me.

      I dont know what to think im not a techy person i just stick to the fact that only ziphone has done it right in my case (week 27 / 39 iphone) and manny others phone´s that i had apply that method..

      Ziph-Lord
      :)

    • Man, when the first iPhone came out last year it took me a week of research and half day of unlocking and jailbreaking yet I was not confident enough to do it again so the next time I used the paid services of iphonesimfree.com. When ziphone came out, jailbreaking and unlocking become easier and free.hacking the iPhone was so new that u can’t expect perfection. If think otherwise then create ur own or sign a contract with at&t.

  18. i dont trust bigboss anymore. Everytime u post a quote from his blog hes always WRONG. Ive NEVER had a single problem with ziphone. In fact ive used it on my iphone 20 times +. This is all speculation or because people turned their phones off during the process.

    I understand that the no wifi was real but zibri has patched it and so has pwnage.

    Bigboss is an app coder, not a jailbreaker, so what gives him the right to repeatedly coders?????

    For instance his post about iclarified. Hr warned against the installer fix. It helped me. He sad it damaged installer but it actually worked better.

    If your not gonna trust someone, let it be bigboss himself

  19. BS! I try of sorts of stuff on my 1.1.4, and it’s forever locking up. I’ll bet I’ve restored and re-jailbroken my phone over 100 times. I use Ziphone exclusively, and I’ve never encountered a problem. My Bootloader is still 4.6.

    • MadHacker says

      If there are no problem, why restore over 100 times ??? “it forever locking up”, “use Ziphone exclusively” ??? Sounds like major issues to me

  20. When it comes down to taking BigBoss’s advice (a code writer), or Zibri’s (not a code writer), I think it would be wise to listen to the Boss!
    I originally jailbroke my iPhone using ziphone and it downgraded my bootloader to 3.9 and greyed my bluetooth! I have since used Winpwn and bootneuter and my bootloader is fixed. However, my bluetooth is lost and gone forever without a restore, and I’m not sure that a restore will fix it. I won’t use ziphone again! I think people use ziphone because it’s the easiest. iLiberty+ and Winpwn require a little thought.

    • That’s becos you restored with Itunes…learn to use these products. They all have issues if you don’t use them correctly. 3.9 is better than 4.6. For those without AT&T.

    • If ZiPhone changes the Bootloader permanently, then how were you able to get it “fixed”. doesn’t make sense.

    • First of all jo, you’re comment made no sense whatsoever and I know how to use “these products”!

      Ken if you had read what I had to say you would have noticed that I did not state that ziphone downgraded my bootloader permanently. I used bootneuter to re-flash my bootloader to 4.6….

  21. Well I have been using every program out there!!!! and when some of them fails… I use Ziphone, to fix my phone in case of emergency, and Ziphone never fails….

    I try to PWNAGE my phone, but fails, I needed to make a urgent call and used Ziphone to fix it… without problems, and then PWNAGE my phone… with succes!!! When the 2.0 OS comes out I will use Ziphone.!!!

    • old pwnage won’t work if you have used ziphone on your phone first.

    • Well I had to wait for the WINPWN, because I don’t have a MAC, I guess that makes it the new one, till the RC!!! I also use iLiberty++ but my firts one was Ziphone, in Febrary ….

  22. MaverickC17 says

    I have also jailbroken many iPhone and have had no problem with ZiPhone 3.0. It works everytime and is very easy to use. When Zibri Jailbreaks 2.0 is when I get 3G.

    People want simple Jailbreaking. Restore, install a program, plug in the phone and click on one button and 60secs you’re done.

  23. so… if ziphone my iphone… how do i fix it ???

  24. well i start my first jailbreak out with zipphone, and hey dudes it was really good, i think the same, no problems, and if they come i patched, but due to some issues using safari that was working, good, but sometimes it just can load websites, and i need to refresh tons of times, i was looking for a restore, and after it several content remains on ipod the other bar that itunes recognized was not erased, and my safari still have problems, with it, so i was looking for a way to revigignize it, but cant with that baseband changed i cant, even used the zibri tool to erase it, so i will like to say that even if zipphone really works, and mostly cant causes any problems, its so risky

  25. Thanks for the warning!

  26. I’ve used ziphone for my 1.1.4 iPhone too and had no problems.

    This seems like a load of scare tactics to get people to switch to iLiberty if you ask me.

  27. I am a Pwnage Supporter !

    I also agree that ZiPhone is not a good way to unlock the iPhone, But BigBoss should not spread rumours about Zibri that he cant code !!!
    I am too disappointed with BigBoss !!!

    • he stole code from. blog.iPhone-dev.org

    • Whatever!
      At least I stole it and did something !!!
      I had 15,000 downloads in the first hour!!! Thats almost the no. that Insomnia got in all these months…..

      Who cares about the rest…..

  28. ziphone works for thousends of people,that is all there is to know about it,keep up the good work zibri.

  29. I downloaded the Baseband info on my iPod Touch but it doesn’t show my baseband it says Not Found..

    So does this mean the iPod Touch doesn’t have a Baseband?

    • The Apple iPod touch does not have a baseband. :) This is only the case at the iPhone.

  30. Thank you for posting this article.

    • Look Who writes !!!
      I atleast made a solution to Unlock iPhones with just a click for newbies!

      And you didn’t do a damn thing! USELESS !!!

    • First off, neither of us made a tool to unlock or jailbreak a phone. And since I don’t to around proclaiming to the world that I did, that makes me one better than you, now doesn’t it.

  31. I unlocked/jailbroke my new 16GB with iLiberty, everything went smooth, but now i have that 3.9 bootloader. How do i get back to 4.6 bootloader? what do i use?
    thanks guys

  32. I have used Ziphone multiple times to jailbreak my 1.1.4 and so far the only problem i have encountered was the glitch where erasing the Zibri’s blog shortcut would cause the SWOD (which was rather wierd). Most likely, when the 2.0 firmware comes out im going to swap over to pwnage anyway for the extra features.

  33. ok, so its dangerous…i would think every jailbreaking method is somewhat dangerous…we all know the risks….it comes down to this…it works…period…its simple..period.

  34. keep going Zibri just keep going
    my iPhone is working well no problem
    the only problem i had so far is when i installed BOSSTOOL to move fonts to free memory,,,and hup my phone was locked and could restore reunlock rejailbreak etc again, thanks for the super tool

  35. Galadriann says

    I nearly exclusively used ZiPhone on almost 40 iPhone that I unlocked without ever a glitch … only had 2 iphones where the process failed … BUT as stated on the program… just quit and retry .. which I did and it worked for those 2 …
    For those wondering … I do have a small problem is that after a restore, iTunes messes things up so I always recommend NOT to restore from iTunes but restart from scratch… (there are plenty of tools now to save all the settings…)…
    For the notice I tried iLiberty and Pwnage but both (specially Pwnage) made my iPhone fairly unstable…
    And as far as the bootloader …. you DO have the option to downgrade it or not … you can use ZiPhone straight out of the box OR start reading the different possibilities … seriously … it helps .. ;-))
    Anyway … I use ZiPhone and will until…
    Well Done Zibri…

    • fab_rick says

      The problems you are getting are from the permissions settings in your /var/mobile/ folder (user folder). If you use SSH or secure FTP you can navigate to /var and recursively set the permissions for mobile to 755. This will solve a lot of issues including notes and bookmarks not saving and applications crashing.

  36. Yea I use the Ziphone to jailbreak my ipod, and it works perfectly nothing goes wrong with it. I use wi-fi and everything great. I use 3.0. I havent had one problem when i jailbreaked my ipod touch using the Ziphone 3.0. It works perfectly for me. :D

  37. I agree with a post way up there where this is just a bash against zibri and ZiPhone. I’ve used ziphone several times on my phone and each time it went bad was because of some other app I’ve installed that screwed me up. I don’t like think that bashing zibri and ziphone is helpful to anyone.

    If you want everyone continue to trust this site, I suggest giving the GOOD and BAD of all the different Jailbreak and Unlock methods and let everyone make their own decision.

    For me…I’ll continue to stick with ZiPhone.

  38. How about a poll to see what people have used with success?
    Only vote on the one that has worked the best can not vote just because you’ve tried it.
    Ziphone-
    iLiberty-
    Pwned

    Let the people speak.

    -Luis

  39. MadHacker says

    I jailbroke my 16GB iTouch 1.1.1 OTB originally with whatever that one click web app was. worked great. i recently upped to 1.1.4 and jailbroke with Ziphone. I have flaky WIFI issues, I restored 1.1.4 and rejailbroke with iLiberty+ and I’m a happy camper once again.

    For those of you that have redone you iPhone 30 or over 100 times using Ziphone ??? thats like least once or twice a week ??? and that’s not a problem ??? I’ve done mine like 3 times in the 6 months. The original jailbreak, one bad update, one good update.

  40. Ok I need help.

    I WAS unlocked in 1.1.4 using Ziphone. All nice and dandy. Everything works.

    Then I decide to take a look at iDemocracy. I like what I see but for some reason I don’t come up as jailbroken in the iDemocracy window. So I decide, “What the heck! I’ll just jailbreak with iDemocracy!”

    So I go ahead and press JAILBREAK.

    The process starts and I leave. In 1 hour I come back and I see a spinning dial. I go u-oh. So I say, “What the heck! I’ll just do a full restore through iTunes!”

    So, I go ahead and force quit the phone. After the screen is black for a while I hold down the home button and connect to my MacBook. Nothing happens! I continue to hold down the home button and hold down the sleep/wake button as well. Nothing happens!! I stop holding the home button and instantly the screen goes to apple logo. Then I am back to the spinning logo.

    So my question is, HOW DO I RESTORE MY PHONE!

    Thanks for all the help and please reply to email (oliverames@gmail.com)

  41. OK

    I finally managed to get it in recovery mode.

    Now I try to connect to the software update server but it won’t work.

    After about 5 minutes the phone streams code again!

    Update: It is in recovery mode for 5 seconds.

    Help?
    I need to restore my iPhone.

    Also, does anybody know where the blooming 1.1.4 file is online!?
    I want it!

  42. I’ve used Ziphone on all 3 iPhones I have unlocked and jailbroken with no problems, and it’d what we’ve recommended in the past at the-iBlog. What alternative do people prefer and why?

    • I don’t know.
      I’m Phuced after using iDemocracy
      not even being able to restore!

  43. I’ve had this iphone since it came out. It has gone thru all sort of jailbrakes and unlocks and i admit that it kinda got frustrating when an error came up and i had to restore everything. The Ziphone was the solution ever since it came out, i had no hopes on using 1.1.3 because it would always crash and restore untill he showed an easy way to jailbrake it. Ever since 1.1.4, he’s methods of jailbraking and unlocking were the easiest, and take it from a satisfied iphone user with t-mobile… Ziphone is so worth the time. As of now i had no chashes or reboots to restore. Zibri is the shiiiet!

  44. dont knw wht really is bad or good but i’ve used ziphone 2 unlock 20+ iphones all 1.1.4 and none have had problems…i looked at idemo and some others but i heard that every1 was happy with ziphone…so i stuck with this…my iphone works great but i u say its bad n messes up the bootloader what should one do?

  45. Clark Tomlinson says

    Personally i’ve used ziphone about 10 times now with no problems at all i really think this entire thing is bogus i think its a way of him to draw traffic away from ziphone to some of the smaller programmers. i do realize that the method is risky but i’ve had no problems at all.

  46. I second the idea of a poll to see the jailbreak methods used the most, i think it would be interesting, especially if ziphone comes out as #1

    As for Oliver, you might find some of the things your looking for on ispazio, translate it through google.

  47. IT took me forever to get this posted. about ziphone be see thats why we at the DEVTEAM were so mad. but if you want to see the new pwnage 1.2 check us out at http://blog.iphone-dev.org

  48. Thank goodness! I hate zibri with a passion. He steals all of the good hackers work and makes it appear like he is the first.

    He just the best blogger, that is all. He’s like a used car salesman.

  49. it only took them about 6 months to post this topic but its about time.. at least the diehard ziphone fans will now realize what they ahve done and why they have had problems.. anyways new pwnage comes out soon for 2.0 and 3g iphones :) just check the blog or click my name for link

    • I dont want to be rude bcos I know u all are doing a good job. I am a software developer too and I know I can take a look at ur code and have issues with it.

      Now how many downloads do u have Gor ur app? 25000? Ziphone had over 3 million. Now that tells me he is going somewhere.

      Now if u guys just come out and say you just dont like him, I will understand.

    • jo he stole the dev teams code go to core.osx86.hu on IRC #iPhone and we can all prove you wrong and show you what code he failEd to give others credit to

    • rpk4.. I was open source right? As a developer yes you should always give credit when credit is due but dont say the work is bad. I will never do that.

  50. My bootloader shows 4.6_M3S2

    I’ve used ZiPhoneOSX a few times now. I’ve even jailbroken friend’s phones. No problems.