A number of sites have sprung up recently that offer to remotely unlock your iPhone for use on other cellular networks. How do they work?



From PCWorld:

Infamous iPhone hacker MuscleNerd shed some light on the matter, Tweeting “they're not using a hack. They're using actual access to the Apple database (which is why the unlock happens through iTunes).” Apple apparently has a whitelist database of unlocked iPhones, so if hackers did discover a way to add IMEI’s to it, the claim is theoretically true. That’s not to say Apple won’t find a way to identify the falsified unlocks and remove them from their database, and you'd better believe they'll be trying. I also imagine Apple is frantically looking to plug up whatever security hole is at fault here, be it a bug in iTunes or some shady (yet entrepreneurial) Apple employee.

  How Do Remote iPhone Unlocking Sites Work?