George Hotz, aka Geohot, the iPhone developer responsible for bringing you the blackra1n jailreaking tool has issued a public service announcement.

First off, he was everyone to know that he’s found an exploit in the current 05.11.77 baseband, which is found on phones running the current iPhone OS, version 3.1.2, that allows the phone to be unlocked.  The new tool, named blacksn0w, will be released on November 4th.

Second he issued a reminder.  All the tools he’s created, including the ones that allow the iPhone to be jailbroken and the one that will allow the iPhone to be unlocked are free.  There are several company’s who are offering to unlock and or jailbreak iPhones for a fee.  Geohot even goes as far as to say he’s turning down $10,000 from one of them for the rights to his blacksn0w program.  These company’s benefit from the public’s lack of information and it’s up to us to educate them about these scam artists who are taking advantage of them.