Notable iOS hacker and jailbreak developer Grant Paul (chpwn) announced on his blog this morning that he has released a new utility called Spire – a free and legal Siri port for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch.
Spire is my (along with Ryan Petrich) new tool for installing Siri on previously unsupported, but jailbroken, devices. Spire is a small download, but while installing it will download Siri itself (directly from Apple). Spire is available in Cydia right now — go get it! This will use about 100 MB of data, so please connect to Wi-Fi before installing.
While this is an exciting release, and certainly represents great progress, it is not yet a complete solution. In order to use Siri on the iPhone 4, 3GS, or iPod touch, you must have access to an iPhone 4S, as Apple still requires authorization to use the service.
In order to make Siri work on non-iPhone 4S devices, you must create a proxy server, or at least gain access to a working proxy server address, although chpwn has provided a few ideas and suggestions.
Apple still requires authorization to use Siri, so information from an iPhone 4S is still required. To insert this information, Spire allows you to enter your own proxy server address. I’ve put up a list of my ideas on how you might get access to a proxy; hopefully you can figure something out.
What’s most exciting about the new exploit, however, is that it’s actually legal, thanks to Apple leaving certain critical files unlocked and unencrypted in the latest iOS 5.0.1 release.
Spire uses a new method to obtain the files necessary for Siri, so it doesn’t have thecopyright issues encountered by previous attempts. Similarly, rather than directing all traffic through a specific proxy server (and the associated privacy issues), Spire allows you to specify your own proxy server.
Hopefully exploits like Spire will only improve over time. Perhaps some day Apple will open Siri for use on devices besides the iPhone 4S, or someone like chpwn will figure out a reliable method for bypassing the authentication requirement.
