Haklab

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2009-05-24T13:39:00.001-07:00

Apple needs to work on improving iPhone piracy

2009-05-12T11:12:00.000-07:00

Apple needs to work on improving iPhone piracy, they have done nothing to stop cracked apps from spreading. Do something Apple, or I will stop developing for your platform. Most of my app users are using cracked copies. You haven't done even a thing to prevent it.

Read this good article by @planetbeing:

Apple needs to play cat and mouse with pirates not jailbreakers:

Apple spends considerable engineering resources attempting to defeat jailbreakers, but historically, we have always been able to defeat anything they throw at us. In trying to defeat jailbreakers, Apple is fighting against a body of skilled volunteers who feel morally, ethically and legally justifiable in defeating such efforts, and would go so far as to feel a moral and ethical obligation to continue to do so. It's not only fun to try to work around such puzzles, but basic ethical common sense tells us that it is only right to be able to do whatever we want to devices we purchased as long as we're not hurting anyone else.

None of the people who work to defeat Apple's jailbreaking protections believe that pirating App Store applications is EVER justified. Nor do they believe that Apple should have a support burden for modified devices.

Yet Apple and many developers continue to equate jailbreaking with piracy, which is both unjust and unproductive toward their own interests. Piracy doesn't require jailbreaking. The one modification that jailbreaking makes to the iPhone, to allow applications to run unsigned code, is unnecessary for piracy because pirated apps are already signed!

Third-party app stores have successfully deployed copy protection for the applications they carry. These app stores run on jailbroken iPhones and their DRM remains uncracked. In contrast, official App Store applications carry no significant DRM. They are encrypted, but the encryption can be side-stepped with a method that has worked, and continues to work, completely unmodified, since day 1 of the App Store.

Whereas several new hurdles have cropped up against jailbreakers during this time, Apple has developed none for pirates. Developers concerned with piracy need to ask Apple why they have not spent any time protecting them against piracy, instead, focusing on playing cat and mouse games with skilled and motivated jailbreakers. A cat and mouse game that would not guarantee developers protection even if Apple succeeded.

A similar cat and mouse game with pirates is likely to be much easier for Apple to win. Instead of fighting against people with the most knowledge and the most motivation, Apple would instead be contending against a group of people who are accustomed to using automated scripts (*cough* script kiddies *cough*), and for more complicated jobs using gdb (a debugger). Lord knows what they would do if Apple, say, disabled debugger attachment for encrypted applications, or obfuscated MobileInstallation, or put protections into the kernel. After all, you can't use gdb to attach to the iPhone kernel, can you?

Please, Apple. These suggestions are free. The first one, honestly, is TRIVIAL. Please for goodness' sake, use one of them! You've had a year to do SOMETHING. ANYTHING. I would have made my own anti-piracy patches, but building in DRM by machine language patching an operating system kernel is not fun, and it'd take me twenty times as long to make the same change as you.

Developers: Don't hate on jailbreaking because you think it "enables" App Store piracy. App Store piracy simply wouldn't exist if Apple actually did anything about it instead of being too busy losing games with jailbreakers instead.

Source: http://www.complicatedstuff.com/2009/05/apple-needs-to-play-cat-and-mouse-with.html

Appulous down?

2009-04-13T16:54:00.000-07:00

Is Appulous down? I just got an e-mail and someone told me that Appulous was down. No it's not Appulous is still up. You can find it at http://www.appulous.org, that's the new URL. There will also be a new Installous download once the new Hackulous.org repo is up. Bookmark it and keep checking back.

Want to help this site?
Just link to this article and spread the word about the new Hackulous repo and Appulous URL. Create a YouTube vid, twitter, whatever. Leechers, now you can't say you can't help us. :)

Related Articles: Installous Down - HELP!

4th Mikey worm loose!

2009-04-13T01:24:00.000-07:00

Alert to Twitter users: The 4th generation of the Mikeyy twitter exploit is out. Just by viewing a twitter profile an XSS code will be injected which will retweet the following tweets:

How TO remove new Mikeyy worm! RT!! http://bit.ly/yCL1s
This worm is getting out of hand Twitter. - Mikeyy
Twitter, your community is going to be mad at you... - Mikeyy

And it even changes your bio and put's the mikey URL in your URL field. It also changes the Hexx color to #mikeyy.

Steps to fix it:
1. Change your hex color/reset it
2. Change your bio and change the URL
3. DONT click on any profile that is suspicious and use another twitter client like TweetDeck instead of the Twitter website

Just wait until Twitter fixes it. I'll make an update here for you fellow Tweeps!

New site: Hackulous

2009-04-11T18:55:00.000-07:00

Many of you are wondering what I've been up to. I've been busy with Appulous, and just now I launched a new site, Hackulous. Keep checking these sites because they will be updated in the coming days. Enjoy browsing these sites! :)

New site: Appulous

2009-04-10T22:46:00.000-07:00

A new site, Appulous has launched. This site is the "solution to a flawed Appulo.us". Appulous may not seem like a big threat to developers but it will eventually become one as more and more people start jailbreaking and downloading the easy to use tools to install cracked iPhone apps. The goal of Appulous.org is to stop Appulo.us from stealing apps and redistributing them. This can only be achieved with the help of other developers. So if any dev is reading this go and check out the About Appulous page to see how you can help.

As Benjamin Franklin said:

“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”

With patience, and persistence we shall be able to defeat iPhone piracy.

The Monkey's Ball

2009-04-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

I've been in talks with the owner of The Monkey's Ball and have finally acquired it from Toppo Media. The Monkey's Ball used to be one of the biggest providers of cracked iPhone apps until they were shutdown by Apple. They got shutdown because they hosted IPA files on their own server.

Why did Haklab acquire The Monkey's Ball?

The site is well known in the jailbreaking and iPhone piracy community. It's previous owners have not done such a good job maintaining it and haven't had any success, I think the site has the potential to do well and I can improve it.

What will happen to The Monkey's Ball?

There will be a lot going on with this new site that Haklab has acquired. I want to keep it a surprise so I won't go in to too much detail. There will be absolutely no illegal activity going on though. ;)

Apple's lawyer visits owner of Appulo.us

2009-04-05T23:46:00.000-07:00

Apple's lawyer just visited the owner of Appulo.us, Kyek, and had a chat with him. I was able to film the video so you can see it here.

Apple's lawyer and Appulo.us owner video

iPhone piracy imminent on iPhone OS 3.0!

2009-04-03T14:33:00.001-07:00

iPhone 3.0 Jailbreak released

Within 24 hours of it's release, Russian hackers at iPhoneApps.ru had cracked iPhone OS 3.0 beta 2 and released an unofficial QuickPWN beta 3.0 program. Of course right now it's still in beta, one wonders how long it will take hackers to jailbreak iPhone OS 3.0 when the final version is out. Apple tries it's best to stop the hackers from jailbreaking with each and every firmware update but they never succeed. It's turned in to a cat and mouse game with Apple and the hackers, but the hackers have always won.

Cracking on 2.0 is a piece of cake!

Apple knows that their App Store system is easily crackable and they have already sent DMCA notices to sites like The Monkeys Ball. With applications like Installous and Crackulous spreading piracy of iPhone applications is ridiculously easy for even your grandma to do. Many developers have had their app pirated and they are expecting Apple to use a better protection system in iPhone OS 3.0.

Do cracked apps work on iPhone OS 3.0?

I tested the current iPhone OS 3 beta 2 and now that it's jailbroken I got a chance to see if Apple did anything to make it harder for the pirates to install cracked apps. After jailbreaking, which was ridiculously easy, I installed Installous and some other apps from Icy. I went to a cracked apps site and downloaded a cracked file. After downloading all I had to do was SSH the cracked file into my iPhone and hit the install button. I rebooted my iPhone and then saw the cracked app appear on my springboard. It was time for me to put the iPhone 3.0 to test and open the cracked app to see if it would really work. I opened the cracked app and to my surprise, it worked on iPhone OS 3.0 beta 2. While it's true that iPhone OS 3 is still in beta I still doubt Apple will be doing anything to prevent piracy of cracked apps.

Will Apple ever be able to stop cracked iPhone apps?

As long as people will be able to jailbreak the hackers will figure out one way or another to crack and spread iPhone piracy. The only way to prevent iPhone piracy is to kill the jailbreak. Apple can only kill the jailbreak by releasing a new iPhone and new iPod Touch with hardware that won't allow a jailbreak. If you've been following the news then you know that Apple is expected to release a new iPhone and a new iPod Touch in the summer. I think the new iPhone and iPod Touch will successfully prevent cracked apps. It makes sense for Apple to go after the pirates because they get 30% of revenue for each app sold on the App Store.

Icy!

2009-03-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

"Faster and clean alternative to Cydia."

It is currently in version 1.0 and was released Ripdev just this week, it is on their repo (http://apt.ripdev.com). It was made to replace the ever popular Cydia developed by Jay Freeman (saurik); with the release of Icy many people of the "scene" have mixed feelings. It comes to mind that saurik has done so much for the Jailbreaking scene and they do not want to see Cydia go under. It also raises concern for the saftey of the cracked apps community,since Ripdev is part of an anti app-piracy prgram. The ever popular owner of Appulous Kyek has said the following:

"I have very mixed feelings about this. Improvement is always good, but my trust and respect for saurik vs. my complete lack of respect for the shit the guys at Ripdev pull (like cloning everything Saurik made, changing one line, and releasing it as a RipDev product) makes Cydia an obvious winner for me. Knowing them, they'll use this to autoinstall their own sources and packages and remove Saurik's. I just can't trust these people.

Let's also not forget that these are the authors of the Kali protection scheme. It would be trivial to college the UDIDs and IP addresses of anyone with the Hackulous repo. Not sure if they'd go that far, but you never know."

"Anything might not be safe, it's just how likely that is. In RipDev's case, they make money off of a service meant to stop app piracy, and this would be a clear opportunity to gather data and improve that service. You'd need a packet listener to be sure, but I'm leery enough to stay away."

Previews of icy (click thumbnails for fullsize):

So with that I will end this post, and on a personal note I am glad to be part of the Haklab team.

Grabulous GUI

2009-03-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

Andydam has created a GUI for Grabulous. Basically it lets you download free apps from Mega4I which charges you to download cracked apps. It's easy to download and install. Credits go to Andydam for GUI, Kyek for making the Grabulous script, Keddyfish for testing, Reilly4CPDA for helping, Chappoisgone for the icon and splash screen. I've created a guide and download here for people.

How to install Grabulous GUI

Download Grabulous GUI and extract Grabulous.app
SSH into your iPhone
Copy Grabulous.app in /Applications
CHMOD Grabulous.app to 777
Reboot your iPhone and you should see Grabulous

How to use Grabulous GUI

1. Open Grabulous by tapping on Grabulous icon

2. This splash screen will pop up

3. You should see this main screen next

4. Enter in an iTunes ID (there is a list of different iTunes ID on the bottom of these post). For example put 1356 for IVCalc v1.1

5. Press Hide keypad to see more options

5. Press Start Download to download the app

6. Once you are done downloading open Installous, press downloads and you should see your app in there. ivcalc-1.1 was this app so tap it and press install!

There are many iTunes ID's but we don't know what ID each application is since Mega4I changed the code.

Here is a list of iTunes ID's thanks to thecheschat's topic on Hackulo.us. If you have any ID's please keep posting and updating in comments.

iTunes ID use these!

1733: Earth Day -phil123
1577: Robo -me
1386: iBreathalyzer -me
2698: Ants village -me
1734: Edge -jupina
4010: iChm -lucaspeed
0519: FastFigure Financial Calculator Code
1773: Sway-1.1.0 0523: Checkbook
7562: Fillpro
1337: Kaplan Medical Terms For Nurses Flash Cards and Reference Guide
1338: The Human Body 2 v2.4.0-2.4
1340: iCare Tracker v1.05
1344: Sanders Q&A: Review for the NCLEX-RNA Examination 1.0
1346: Color Skeletal System
1364: RSI 1.1
1370: Jaundice 1.0
1372: Medical Drugs 1.0
13670: Whip 1.2
4985: iDownload
8562: Downtown Disney Mini Guide
1312:Microbiology Flash Cards
1236: BP-Charter
2211: Big Two
2213: Place your Bet

Grabulous

2009-03-26T23:34:00.001-07:00

Update: Download Grabulous GUI here.

Mega4i, the guys that recently started pirating iPhone apps have upset the pirates. The owner of Appulo.us Kyek has come up with an application which he calls Grabulous. His IP was banned when he was testing it so don't abuse this. I got banned too but I used a proxy. Thank Keddyfish for this too because he betatested it when Kyek was banned.

What is Grabulous?

Grabulous is an application that lets you have full free unlimited access to cracked apps downloads from Mega4I. Mega4I only lets you download a certain amount of cracked iPhone apps before requiring you to purchase a membership. With Grabulous you can download as much apps as you want.

What is the purpose of Grabulous?

The purpose of Grabulous is to make Mega4I server go down. The owner of Appulo.us, Kyek wants people to download as much apps as they can using Grabulous so Mega4I server will go down. Kyek doesn't like it that Mega4I is asking people to pay for developers work, and neither do I so I think it's completely fine to use Grabulous. If Mega4I didn't charge it would be a different story.

How do I use/install Grabulous?

Right now there is no UI for this yet because Kyek isn't experienced in Obj-C programming. But it still should be easy to use.

You need cURL and OpenSSL from Cydia so open Cydia search and install these.
Now you can download Grabulous GUI (UPDATE GUI Version added) Credit goes to Kyek, Keddyfish, and Bbbb on Hackulo.us!
After downloading Grabulous SSH in to your iPhone.
Upload the Grabulous.sh file to /bin
Chmod Grabulous.sh to 755
Open terminal or Putty and enter the commands grabulous ITUNES_ID or grabulous 291720439 (for iTunes_ID put the iTunes ID of the application. for example if iTunes link is http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=291720439&mt=8 you need to put 291720439 for the iTunes ID)

Using Grabulous you can keep downloading as many files as you want from Mega4I. One person won't matter but if many people keep doing it Mega4I server will go down and they will have to stop being so immoral and stop charging for developers apps.

Mega4i - The worst of the pirates

2009-03-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

I like Appulo.us because it's owner Kyek started it to let people trial apps. He never wanted to profit off of the devs and always encouraged people to buy apps instead of pirating them.

Mega4i has launched

A new site Mega4i has launched now. It's trying to make money from the devs and the pirates by charging to download cracked apps. Now who would want to pay for cracked apps when they want to download them free? No pirate would want to do that. I am sure someone will crack their application and start distributing their cracked app. What Mega4is doing is very immoral. If they want to be in the pirating community they need to stop charging for downloading pirated apps. No other site charges but Mega4i is charging and that makes it the worst of all pirates.

Mega4i App

Mega4i app looks good compared to Installous. You can load it up and download and install cracked apps directly from inside it. It's just like the app store and it can check for updates to each application too. It is sad that they are charging for it and they should not be surprised if their app is cracked.

Time for Mega4i to shutdown

Even though I am in favor of try before you buy sites like Appulo.us I do not like people who profit off of developers work. These people are greedy and they should be shutdown. I just noticed they are hosting their direct downloads of IPA cracked apps on a US server. Thanks ReillyCP4DA on Hackulo.us for giving me their IP. I also found the identity and e-mail of person who owns Mega4i. He should be receiving notice from Apple soon.

Goodbye Appulous

2009-03-25T09:27:00.001-07:00

The future of iPhone piracy doesn't look too bright when you see that the biggest site of them all, Appulo.us is close to being shutdown. It's really a shame because I would of liked to see Appulo.us continue and see where it would go. The 500 internal server error pages were both hints of Appulo.us dying.

What lead to the death of Appulo.us?

There are many contributing factors that lead to the death of such a big site like Appulo.us.

iPod Touch 2G users - There seem to be tons of people that own an iPod Touch 2G and when a jailbreak came out a lot of iPod Touch 2G users added Installous and started downloading apps.
Server costs - As traffic inceases and a lot of people start learning about Appulo.us the server gets overloaded. Appulo.us now requires more than one server to run in order to stay up. The owner of Appulo.us will have to spend alot of money to pay for the servers.
Leechers - People just come, download, and leave the site without supporting it in anyway. They're just freeloaders and leave the site after downloading cracked iPhone apps.

Will Appulo.us ever be back?

Knowing the owner of Appulo.us he never gives up easily. He will give it his best to keep the site up for as long as he can. He will try to bring the site back up and he may be able to for some time but he will soon be forced to shutdown the site because of leechers and serve costs.

Cracked apps on torrents?

2009-03-24T13:23:00.000-07:00

Now that many filesharing hosts are starting to crack down on cracked .IPA files it could mean the beginning of an end to iPhone piracy. We all know that pirates will always find a way to pirate and when one ways fails they will be able to find another one. Aside from filesharing sites the only other way for pirates to spread cracked apps is through torrents.

The big question is, can iPhone piracy exist on torrents?

And to answer the question, no! Firstly look at how many apps there are in the app store and how often they are updated. That would require a lot of torrents to be seeded and there is no way these torrents will last really long. There are too many applications in the iTunes store and new versions of these are updated frequently. It is hard for a torrent to keep up to date with all the different versions and it would be confusing for a pirate to search for and find the exact application he/she is looking for. Kyek does a good job of explaining why Torrents cannot exist in his post.

Kyek's post on Torrents:

First: Go to Appulo.us. Look at how many pages of apps there are. Now, think.
Let's say there's 2,000 apps on Appulous and growing, right now. That's over 2,000 individual torrents that have to be seeded nonstop for the torrent to stay alive. With how leecher-centric this community has proven to be, there's is NO WAY that all these apps are going to have seeders three months from when they're posted, and we'd be super lucky if they even lasted that long. What would happen is that a torrent link would die, then 3 other people would notice and resubmit it later and then each one of those would die even faster (since now, it's not just one torrent that has to be kept alive) and the process repeats. We'd just end up with a ton of dead and useless torrent links.

Ok but what if we put ALL the IPAs all in one package?! Then people could get that one torrent and download whatever they want!
Great idea! Then what happens each of the ~20 times per day that a new app gets posted? What happens when an app update gets posted? You can't update the torrent -- you'd have to make a new torrent. But you can't just drop the original torrent because that it would become useless for everyone still using it. In a matter of two weeks, we'd have 50 massive torrents each with different apps and versions, and a ton of dead links. Also, who's going to take the responsibility of packaging ALL of the IPAs together into a torrent every time a new one needs to be made?

Hmm.. what if we just did a new all-IPAs torrent every day?
This could work in theory, but think a month out. 30 torrent links that are now worthless because they're antiquated, a MASS of people getting confused-as-hell because they're not sure which torrent is the most updated one, and again, the problem of who's going to do it.

BeeJive IM keeps crashing

2009-03-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

If you have a pirated or patched version of BeeJive IM then you may have noticed that it keeps crashing. Well, good! If you like the app then buy it. If you don't like it then simply remove it and look for another one. Insulting the developer of this app will do you no good. Buy BeeJive or just find another alternative in the App Store.

If you already installed a patch version but want to buy it you will have to read this and follow the instructions to buy it.

If you are receiving the PC LOAD LETTER error, your device will work once you purchase the application. On the other hand, if you are receiving the License Key Suspended error, you will need to provide us with proof of purchase before your device will be removed from the blacklist.

Send your device id, iTunes account name and iTunes email receipt to support@beejive.com.

Why disabling the .IPA extension won't solve any problems

2009-03-20T22:53:00.000-07:00

Cracked iPhone apps are packaged in an .IPA format and then they're uploaded to hosts like 2shared, 4shared, Zshared, and various other file hosting websites. A person e-mailed me suggesting that I should contact each host and ask them to disable the uploading of .IPA extension files. I thought that was a brilliant idea at first but then I realized that even if this extension is disabled people will rename it to another extension and upload it. In the iPhone pirating community, when one door closes another door opens. This is how it always works. There is no point in wasting time to do all this. It would however make it easier on the file sharing hosts to disable the .IPA extension because that would block people from using it for iPod friendly downloads and have them find another alternative site. It would make sense for sites like Rapidshare to disable .IPA since they always end up deleting each Rapidshare link added to Appulo.us.

iPhone 3.0 and what it means for the crackers

2009-03-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

iPhone applications can be easily cracked and downloaded with programs like Crackulous and Installous. iPhone developers have tried to put protection measures on their applications but the crackers have always found a way around it. iPhone apps can only be cracked only if the iPhone itself is jailbroken. Without a jailbreak apps cannot be cracked or installed. Apple has tried and tried to stop the jailbreak but the iPhone Dev Team has always been able to release updates to their own jailbreak software and help others jailbreak their iPhone. Do not think that the iPhone Dev Team supports piracy though because they don't! They just do this for the fun of it.

Can you jailbreak iPhone 3.0

Now that Apple has announced iPhone OS 3.0 which is due to launch in the summer, many current jailbreaking users will be wondering whether or not you can jailbreak or even install cracked apps on it. The answer to that is, yes you will be able to jailbreak it and yes you can put cracked apps on it. The iPhone Dev Team jailbroke their iPhone and confirmed it in their recent blog post. What we still don't know is whether or not Apple will release a new iPhone or even a new iPod Touch that can prevent a jailbreak from occurring on it. If they do then they will be successful in preventing the piracy of thousands of iPhone apps. On the other hand if they don't then piracy will continue and grow at a rapid rate.

I highly suspect Apple's new devices will prevent the jailbreak because they get 30% of the revenue of each App Store sale, and they don't want to loose a lot of money. Right now piracy of iPhone apps isn't really that big but it's growing. What do you think? Will Apple be able to prevent iPhone apps piracy? Could iPhone 3.0 mean the end of cracked apps on new generation iPhones or iPod Touches?

Appulo.us

2009-03-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

What is Appulo.us?

Appulo.us is the main site where cracked iPhone applications are uploaded. People from the iPhone cracking community crack iPhone applications, upload them to file hosting services like Rapidshare/Megaupload/4shared and share the downloads.

All files are .IPA files and they are downloaded through a program named Installous. Appulo.us only has the links to the downloads, Installous actually downloads and installs the cracked .IPA files.

How do people crack iPhone applications?

They use a program called Crackulous to do it. There is another long method to do it, but Crackulous is a more easier and instant program that does it. It's a native iPhone application that runs only on jailbroken iPhones. Developers can take measures to protect their iPhone applications but the crackers will always find a way around the protection. As of right now the only iPhone app crackers haven't been able to crack is iPref-- an application created by RiPDev. They offer their own KaliAntipiracy protection system to allow developers to protect their apps from being cracked, but it's too expensive. It's not worth it paying for this system because it will eventually be cracked.

Who can download cracked iPhone applications?

Only people who successfully jailbreak can crack iPhone applications and install them. Other than jailbreaking there is no other possible way to get pirated iPhone apps on your iPhone. Developers that are against piracy can only hope that Apple's new iPhone won't be jailbreakable.

Is there a way developers can get their applications removed from Appulo.us?

That's where the problem is. Appulo.us doesn't actually host the files on their serves but they link to the specific downloads on filesharing sites. They are basically a repository of links so they can't be liable for any of your losses. The crackers upload the files, not the owner of Appulo.us. Even if a developer sends a DMCA notice to their current host, which is located in the Netherlands it won't make a difference because they don't host the actual apps and they are also not located in the US. What developers can do is contact the individual filesharing sites and have their files removed quickly by sending a DMCA notice, but that is a waste of time because crackers will always reupload the .IPA files once they're deleted. When one download goes down, more mirrors come up. It's definitely not worth it and developers should just forget about it and keep working on their own apps. If they're good then they'll make good money.

Who owns Appulo.us?

Appulo.us is owned by a mastermind that goes by the username of Kyek. Here is a bio he himself posted:

I'm Kyek, I'm in my mid-20s, I live on the east coast of the USA, and I started programming, hacking, and all that fun stuff since not long after I was potty-trained. I love this junk. Around July (I think?) I thought "hmm.. now that iPhone 2.0 is out, I wonder if anyone's started working on breaking the DRM." So I do a little googling and I found the small team that got together to do it. Shortly after, lsemtex succeeded with the help of the team and released an overview of the method. I wrote the first full cracking guide and released it on Haklabs.com (for the uninitiated, I'm not talking about Haklab, the guy who terrorized your site -- Haklabs.com/appstore was the first mainstream iPhone 2.0-dedicated forum. Since been replaced 3 or 4 times and then taken offline), and that's how it all started. Well, the abridged version, anyway.

At the end of July, I planned a little project that I codenamed AppDB. I hated how everyone just posted their links on forums, because it was impossible to search, you had to cross-reference everything with iTunes to find out what it was, and the BIGGEST issue was that not only did you have to look on like 9 different forums to make sure you had the latest stuff, there were constant battles over who cracked what first. It was pretty clear that we needed to mature the scene a bit and start using an index. And so, I started working on the AppDB.

Originally, AppDB was going to be part of the geniusblog forum -- A forum that sprung up to fill the gap left by Haklabs.com being taken offline the first time. But then I realized that I wouldn't be solving my biggest problem if I did that. People here have some seriously crazy loyalties to the forums that got them started out in the scene. People from xSellize can't imagine being anywhere else. People from Pr0x or iFortner, the same. We all have a place we call "home" when it comes to iPhone cracks. So making the AppDB as part of another forum would just ensure that only that forum's members would really use it. Practically overnight, Appulous was born.

And so, here we are. I launched the site to the public at the beginning of September with a whole 200-300 apps, getting about 5,000 unique users a day. Now, we have over 2000 apps, get something to the tune of 80-90k unique visits daily, and the most recent stats are showing 5.7 million visits per month -- that's 108.5 million pageloads a month. This site has blown up into something crazy -- and Apple knows it, too. We've been "forced to shut down" handfuls of times now, but at this point it's just sport I think I might invite Apple's lawyers to my holiday party. It's been good times.

The one thing that's important to remember is that Appulous does not "belong" to any forum. Many people think that Appulous is Hackulous's site because of how similar the names are, but that's not true. I became good friends with the admin of geniusblog.net, and we decided that since our sites were both growing so rapidly, we'd split the cost of a dedicated server. Geniusblog.net became Hackulo.us at that point, and we established some Appulous support forums there to get my site going. That's where the tie ends, however. While I still consider that forum my "home", I'm still firm that Appulous does not belong to any one forum -- this site is free, and it's for everyone.

So, now you know who I am and what I do, if you didn't already! iFortner's asked me to provide some updates about the site here as well as field questions, so ask away and I'll check back when I can. My next post will be about the upcoming massive makeover Appulous is getting, called Appulous V2!

Kyek

Why does Appulo.us exist?

The primary reason Appulo.us was started is because it's meant to be used as a system to try applications in the App Store before buying them. Apple doesn't allow you to do this so the hackers have taken the responsibility among themselves to provide the apps and let people try them before buying them. Hopefully developers feel better after they know that this is the main goal of Appulo.us.

Appulo.us down - HELP!

2009-03-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

Installous has moved to http://www.appulous.org please bookmark the new URL and come back here for the new Installous update!
Oh, please. Look at the dates of my blog posts before making a comment. Is Appulo.us down? You may have come here when you searched Appulo.us down. Mostly people end up at my old article all the time and they think Apple brought Appulo.us but this is not true. Problem is many people are using Appulo.us that it's down. Appulo.us is seperate from Installous too so it may look like Installous is down but WRONG it's not! Installous is an app and Appulo.us is a website.

So now you know why Appulo.us is down? Good! Now you can post a comment. Leave good comments for the admin to give him encouragement to continue the site. He does lot of hard work to make this possible.

And the admin just posted this now

The server on Appulo.us apparently failed; I'm unable to access Appulo.us server to reboot it or check the Appulo.us log files, but I've contacted the guys on location and the problem will hopefully be resolved in the next few hours. I won't have any information on why this happened until the guys either report back to me, or they get the server up and I get a chance to explore the logs.

If this drags on and remains unfixed, I'll change the Appulo.us DNS to a maintenance page that explains what's going on -- but for now, it could be up in as soon as five minutes so I won't make that change quite yet.

I'll post again when I know something more.

There you have it. So do not worry about Appulo.us being down. It's just temporarily down for you. Relax and download from the App Store.

Haklab is here to stay!

2009-03-02T17:33:00.000-08:00

I was planning on giving this blog away and just leaving the scene as it is once and for all. There were many nice people who e-mailed me wanting to take this domain but I couldn't give this domain away. I've owned this domain and posted on this site for months and I just couldn't let go. Sorry everyone. I did get a lot of ideas for this website and I want to make it into a website that has accurate news and info about both cracking and iPhone scene. There will be no joke, no website reporting, and definitely not any more "Old Haklab" style posts. I realize I will need to build back my trust in this community and I am sure I will achieve this someday. Watch out for the upcoming Haklab.com site. I will be looking for staff members to help me with this website and there will be much better news and posts here. I'll let the new website speak for itself once it's out.

I'm giving Haklab.com away to...

2009-02-27T21:51:00.000-08:00

If you read my last post you would have noticed that I'm now shutting down Haklab. I don't need this domain or blog anymore. If anyone is interested in this domain name/site just send an e-mail to ilovewarez4sho[@]gmail.com. You must tell me what you plan on doing with this domain name. I will give this domain to whoever I think deserves it. This is probably my last post here. There are more important things I need to take care of.

Goodbye crackers,
- Mr. Haklab

Time to put an end to this! - READ

2009-02-25T07:41:00.000-08:00

No, Haklab was NEVER a website against iPhone cracked apps in fact it was actually the opposite.

The Real Story

It all started back when the creator of Haklabs.com started a FluxBB forums where a group of hackers had figured out how to crack Super Monkey Ball - the FIRST cracked iPhone app from the App Store. People started sharing their knowledge and figuring out how to crack other iPhone apps too. Soon there was a guide and a lot of people started cracking and putting up popular titles like Enigmo. One day Haklabs.com was down for maintenance and two more forums Genius Blog and Crack Apple were born.

Genius Blog was a very good community and I even learned how to crack apps myself using Kyek's guide. I cracked iPhone apps and even downloaded them for trial purposes and just because I thought it was a "cool" thing.

A problem with these forums was that they were unorganized and people had long lists and some people stole cracked apps from others and claimed credit for it. I wanted to make a very organized site for cracked apps so I started Haklab.com. I never actually added cracked apps because I had second thoughts about it.

I started thinking about the legalities of such a site. Then I noticed that the owner of Crack Apple was a teeenager who had is Whois information exposed and used 000webhost a host that is strictly against content like cracked apps, Haklabs was hosted on GeekStorage which didn't allow such content, and Genius Blog was hosted on HostGator.

Strengthening the community
I have previously owned movies/warez sites and I knew these sites could get shutdown. None of these hosts allow illegal content. I decided to report them to their hosts and see if they would have anything against cracked iPhone apps. It worked! All the sites got shutdown. As I did it I blogged about it on Haklab.com and made myself a "fake developer". The response I got was amazing. A lot of people were pissed off, and many people started posting comments and inappropriate messages. I purposely posted each site here so anyone looking for cracked apps would know which websites there are to get cracked apps from. I wanted to strengthen the cracking community and I thought I could do that by pissing everyone off, reporting them to their hosts so they wouldn't get shutdown in the future, and getting them to work together. What if a real developer came in the beginning and decided to take action? No one was really prepared. I had to be the person who made everyone take all the extra steps. It being a "Piracy Police" but enough is enough. I've helped out the cracking community a lot in many ways if you think about it (and pissed off too :P). It was fun playing the role of a "Mr. Haklab" and take a look at my Achievements. But it's time to end this once and for all. Say goodbye to Mr Haklab! It was all in fun.

My "REAL" Stance on Cracked iPhone Apps
I am 100% with Appulo.us's policy. Download iPhone apps ONLY for TRIAL PURPOSES this is what I do this is what owner of Appulo.us does and their staff. If you don't like the app remove it and if you like it then buy it and support the developer who made it. Most are only 99 cents.

Now if you'll excuse me. It's time for me to uninstall some apps from Installous and make some purchases. I don't use most of these apps anyway.

- Mr. Haklab
Crack, Hack, and Enjoy™!

Achievements

2009-02-22T07:35:00.000-08:00

I always look back and wonder what I achieved by starting this site. Ever since beginning of cracked apps I have been fighting to stop piracy and I made good progress. I am very proud of what I do and my achievements keep motivating me. So this post is here to tell people what I did and how I helped fight piracy. It will be updated with more achievements and all my good deeds I do as they happen. Maybe Ian or Apple will hire me for their legal team someday.

Achievement #1 - July 31 '08: I e mailed Award Space and told them that a website CrackApple.com was sharing cracked apps in their forums. They shutdown that site afterwards. And over 900 people lost that big forums for their cracked apps. I made a really huge impact.

Achievement #2 - August 1 '08: I emailed Host Gator and told them about GeniusBlog.net and how thousands of people shared cracked apps on it. Host Gator immediately responded and suspended their account.

Achievement #3 - August 8 '08: I e-mailed Rapidshare and got all of Boosted4Funs links deleted. All I had to do was copy and paste all his links and Rapidshare deleted it.

Achievement #4 - July 31 '08: I e-mailed GeekStorage and had them suspend Haklabs.com because that's where the cracks app started and many people shared them there.

Achievement #5 - August 17 '08: I e-mailed the host of The Mobile Apps and got them to shut The Mobile Apps down. At that time it was the most popular site of cracked apps downloads and loads of people went there to get cracked apps.

Achievement #6 - October 5 '08: I e-mailed the host of iFortner forums and they were forced to remove all the cracked apps from their forums.

Achievement #7 - Octoberr 17 '08: I won third place as worst blog ever on Bloggers Choice Awards. All crackers hate me and this is good because that means I'm doing something right.

Achievement #8 - November 13 '08: I reported The Monkeys Ball a huge site for cracked apps and got them to shutdown. One of my biggest achievements ever. This was a really proud day for me.

Achievement #9 - November 14 '08: I made a post on How to take action against cracked apps. This would help other developers report their apps and get them removed.

Achievement #10 - November 16 '08: I managed to acquire Appulo.us, the largest cracking sites domain and educate crackers on cracking for some days. This was important for crackers to know what they were doing and I ended up educating thousands of people.

Achievement #11 - December 12 '08: A teenager brought The Monkeys Ball domain and thought of putting cracked apps. I immediately made a post here and the teen realized what hes doing is wrong and trouble he could get in so he stopped. If he had opened it it would be receiving thousands of cracked apps downloads. I helped stop this.

Achievement #12 - January '09: I silently e-mailed IPARepo's host and reported the illegal files they hosted and I also e-mailed Ian. Afterwards IPA repo was shutdown.

Achievement #13 - February '09: I brought Installous.net and Crackulous.net and made it to PCWorld and ArsTechnica news. It was to show crackers how it feels when someone steals our apps. I didn't sell their apps but just pretended to.

Achievement #14 - February 20 '09: I found a vulnerability on Appulo.us the largest cracking site and took advantage of it to educate users on cracked apps. People who were illegally dowloading apps were redirected on a page to this site. This made some impact on people because in some comments people didn't know Appulo.us was illegal. People even came to this site searching if Appulo.us is illegal.

Present: I'm working hard on a system to bring down all cracked apps sites and get people to stop. Even if it takes years I will come up with a system to stop piracy once and for all.

Cracking apps is not right.. STOP!

2009-02-20T17:05:00.001-08:00

YOU ARE HERE BECAUSE APPULOUS IS OWNED BY APPLE NOW!

You are not allowed to crack iPhone apps it's illegal and you could be prosecuted to the fullest extent for cracking iPhone apps. Support the developers and pay the small fees for the apps. Many developers already started making trial versions of their apps and some sites are even doing free promos.Don't crack apps, because it could mean The End of Jailbreaking.

Your IP has been LOGGED! Beware. Any activities from now on will activate Apple's killswitch and your IP and address will be reported to Apples Headquarters. Stop whatever you're doing now and pay for all the cracked apps you downloaded otherwise remove them.