# Wired Wednesday – Old iPhone But You Want Siri? No Problem

- Link: https://exclusiveaccess.net/wired-wednesday-old-iphone-but-you-want-siri-no-problem/
- Published: 2011-12-28T12:19:08-05:00
- Author: EAN

These Siri hacks are getting serious. The latest one is the work of two veteran 
hackers, and, unlike previous Siri ports, is technically legal — though legal certainly
doesn’t mean the same thing as “endorsed by Apple.”

Grant Paul (chpwn on Twitter) and Ryan Petrich have hacked Siri, Apple’s virtual
digital assistant, to run on any jailbroken iOS 5 device with a tool they call Spire.
Petrich previously hacked an iPhone 3GS to run Siri, and Paul has a number of hacks
available in the Cydia app store, where Spire is also currently available.

In his blog post, Paul says that Spire “uses a new method to obtain the files necessary
for Siri, so it doesn’t have the copyright issues encountered by previous attempts.”

However, there is still one major obstacle for Spire: It requires an iPhone 4S proxy
server in order to actually communicate with Apple’s servers. A proxy server is 
essentially a middle man that makes requests of another server. In this case, the
proxy server receives your Siri requests (e.g., “Siri, what time is it?”) and then
fetches a response from Apple’s servers.

Acquiring an iPhone 4S proxy isn’t easy, but the obstacle isn’t insurmountable.

The easiest solution — and the option that’s available now — is to grab the proper
proxy server authentication tokens from a iPhone 4S. This donor phone could be your
own 4S, or the 4S of a trusted confidante. But Paul also thinks we could soon see
fee-based services that will rent you space on a Siri proxy. What’s more, Paul believes
something like Google’s speech API could be used to get around some of the data-
parsing Siri normally would handle.

Earlier this month, a hack brought Siri to jailbroken iOS 4 units, but it was definitely
illegal, utilizing copyrighted binaries from the iPhone 4S. Before that, developers
at Applidium reverse-engineered Siri’s protocol. They posted their instructions 
online so intrepid iOS hackers could port Siri to other iDevices using a 4S UDID.
Siri’s also been hacked to control a thermostat and a rotary dial phone, among other
things.

Spire is a 100MB download (mostly because you’re actually downloading Siri directly
from Apple), and Paul advises interested DIYers to download over Wi-Fi.

Although “Spire was cool and all,” Paul hints that there’s more to come. Does it
have to do with Siri? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

By Christina Bonnington