AirPods Hacked With Microwave And Aluminum Foil

AirPods Hacked With Microwave And Aluminum Foil To Get One Of The Latest Features

A group of friends in India evaded Apple's restrictions on AirPods Pro 2 and location, they managed to enable all the features implemented in Apple's headphones.

AirPods Pro 2 are a clear example that they are not just ordinary headphones to listen to music or other content with extraordinary quality. Apple has given them new features related to improving hearing health, something that caught the attention in several regions of the world but in one in particular, they did something that surprised everyone. These functions are not available in India, so three friends came up with a trick to bypass Apple's location restrictions with the help of a microwave oven and aluminum foil. How did they do it?

AirPods Pro 2 have very important features for people with hearing problems

This is the story of Jayashimha, Arnav Bansal and Rithvik Vibhu, three friends who came together for a common cause: to enable full use of the health features of the AirPods Pro 2 to help their grandmothers with hearing problems. The first went to a store with his father to buy the AirPods for his grandmother, sadly when they tried them on they did not find the function on the iPhone.

India is one of the countries where, due to health regulations, Apple's functions are not available. He was disappointed but that did not stop him from achieving his goal. The friends who are based in Bengaluru built what is known, according to WIRED, as a Faraday cage. With the help of a microwave and aluminum foil, they managed to evade the location restrictions to allow the AirPods to have all the functionalities.

The three friends are part of a technology collective that is dedicated to contributing information about hardware and software, this is where they shared their feat to the world through X's account. After what they achieved, they received several requests from other people in India who have the same problem, they bought these AirPods for the functions they have and other older adults have not been able to use them.

How they managed to evade the restrictions on the AirPods Pro 2

In addition to building the Faraday cage, they relied on a tenth generation iPad with Wi-Fi. It is a complicated task that requires a lot of technique and some patience, although before entering the procedure, it required important research about how iOS establishes the location of a device in the real world.

Wi-Fi devices are subject to some checks, for example, Apple servers detect which Apple Store region they are connected to, in addition to the time zones, languages, and regions where they are configured. The Cupertino mobile operating system launches a web request that is returned with a country code according to the location given by the IP.

Everything could have been changed except for the IP address. There is no way it can be evaded so easily, not even with a VPN. Interestingly, iOS also puts the magnifying glass on a device when it connects to Wi-Fi and the service set identifiers, this when there are more exposed wireless networks. In turn, it also tracks the MAC addresses of the other devices and even the routers.

This is where the famous Faraday cage comes in, they blocked the electromagnetic signals reaching the iPad to make it seem like it was the only device in the environment. The microwave came into action to block the signals. This is because the electromagnetic waves of the oven have the same frequency as Wi-Fi signals. With the help of an open source Wi-Fi location database and an SSID cycling tool, they managed to evade the restrictions and the iPad was placed in a very remote location like California.

Apple could block such procedures in the future.

WIRED tried to contact Apple for its view on this case. It went further and asked dedicated researchers about the possibility that this story could be blocked by those in Cupertino. A cybersecurity professor, Alan Woodward, declared that it is "very interesting" what the three friends achieved. It requires a lot of technical knowledge to be able to avoid "geofencing", as they did with the Faraday cage and the software. Although he points out that Apple can, at any time, block the entire procedure that the friends did.

While Apple can speak out about this event, the friends are already putting into operation a second stage of the Faraday cage. They intend to do more experiments but in a safer way. The friends' grandmothers can already use it.

In Arnav Bansal's case, his grandmother uses headphones to watch TV. Now, with AirPods, he can enjoy his programs in a pleasant way despite having a certain hearing loss. Will there be a response from Apple to what happened?