Jonathan Zdziarski

Johnathan Zdziarski held his live O'Reilly webcast earlier today, during which he demonstrated how to bypass the iPhone's passcode lock as promised. As it turns out, the forensic information he was talking about that he showed how to gain access to was the very same personal information he mentioned finding previously.

Johnathan Zdziarski will be doing a live 45-minute webcast on September 11th targeted toward and anyone else who has a need to access the not-so-readily available data on an iPhone" by bypassing the passcode lock security using a customized firmware bundle, enabling users to "recover, process, and remove sensitive data stored on the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod Touch."

Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the books "iPhone Open Application Development" and the iPhone Forensics manual, found one day while conducting a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G that the code in the new 2.x software that phones home to Apple to check if an application is authorized. That's pretty scary, but what's even scarier is that if it checks as unauthorized, the iPhone will then disable it.

Some disturbing information has come about that might make you think twice about handing in your old iPhone to Apple to be refurbished. An Oregon State police officer was able to recover email, photos, and other data from an "out-of-the-box refurbished iPhone" he had purchased. Jonathan Zdziarski was contacted by the officers who found the information.