Seanooi.net

An Anthology of Stochastic Thoughts
←     →

SSH Into iPhone Without Wireless Router

Posted under iPhone, Mac OS X, Tips | Leave a comment →

I have always wondered if it were possible to SSH into my iPhone without a wireless router and search results on Google always pointed to no… This was before I found out that it was possible to do so.

Steps that I will be explaining will only apply to jailbroken iPhones and Macs, because I do not want to waste my time tinkering with Windows’ complicated network settings, so if you’re a PC user, I’m sorry, you’re out of luck. But if you found a way to do so, please do let me know and I can post it up as reference.

Instructions will be based on Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2 Things you will need will be of course, an iPhone, and a Mac with wireless capabilities. Which covers almost all Macs.

  1. Go into System Preference
  2. Click on Network
  3. Click on AirPort
  4. Turn AirPort on if you haven’t already
  5. Click on the Network Name dropdown menu and choose Create Network…
  6. The Name field will be your wireless name, or SSID. Leave the Channel as it is, and tick Require Password if you wish to do so.
  7. You will be asked to key in your admin password to finalize your network creation

Now that you’ve created a network, it’s time to connect your iPhone and SSH into it.

  1. Connect your iPhone like you would with any WAP.
  2. After you’re connected, give it awhile to register an IP address.
  3. Tap on the blue arrow beside your connected network to reveal your IP address. This is the address you will be using to SSH into your iPhone
  4. I like to use Coda for FTP purposes. But if you don’t have an FTP app, you can try Cyberduck
  5. Fire up your FTP app and click Connect on Coda or New Connection on Cyberduck.
  6. Change the Protocol to SFTP
  7. In the Server text field, type in the IP address you found in step 3
  8. Your username is root
  9. Your password is alpine[1]
  10. Leave the Port as 22 and click Connect

You have just SSH’ed into your iPhone without a wireless router. This method is most probably noted already somewhere on the web, but I have never been able to search for it. So hopefully this post will be of help to cheap people like me who do not want to fork out $50 for a wireless router

Reference

[1] In a previous post, I wrote on the vulnerability of not changing your iPhone’s root password and steps on how to do it. It is highly recommended that you do so as to secure your iPhone.