Aside from the community forums, Hackulous is known for its direct connections with Apptrakr, a huge web-based index of cracked apps and Installous, a clever piece of software which allows the installation of iOS software found via Apptrakr and elsewhere.

But as of yesterday, Hackulous is officially no more.

“We are very sad to announce that Hackulous is shutting down,” the team said in a statement.

“After many years, our community has become stagnant and our forums are a bit of a ghost town. It has become difficult to keep them online and well-moderated, despite the devotion of our staff. We’re incredibly thankful for the support we’ve had over the years and hope that new, greater communities blossom out of our absence.”

While the announcement was made on Hackulous, it didn’t mention the fate of either Apptrackr or Installous, the software that relies on Apptrackr to function.

Installous is installed on millions of Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad and was the key way for people to transfer pirate apps to their phones and tablets. However, following the Hackulous announcement the app has been rendered completely non-functional, apparently disabled by the Hackulous team that controlled it.

TorrentFreak tried to contact Dissident, the admin of the projects, for an official statement. He has spoken with us on numerous occasions in the past (and has even guest-blogged here) but the emails bounced. It appears that for whatever reason he’s preferring to keep a low profile at the moment.

We did manage to speak to two other people familiar with the sites’ operations and they told us they were surprised at the decision due to a number of factors.

The sites were apparently healthy and still had plenty of users. Indeed, the shutdown statement appears to carry a contradiction – “ghost town” forums are by their very nature not particularly difficult to keep “well-moderated” since nobody uses them. Nevertheless, this is the cited reason for the shutdown.

Also, Installous was used by millions and served up ads each and every time someone carried out a key app-related action within the software. Regardless of whether the Hackulous forums were doing well or not, Hackulous was still installed on millions of machines leading to (presumably) some half-decent advertising revenue to fund the project and more. It’s difficult to see why that would be terminated due to a quiet forum.

The other issue is that Dissident has always gone out of his way to say how passionately he feels about the “try before you buy” aspect of Installous and how important it is to give people a chance to taste an app before committing to a purchase. Trials are certainly more readily available officially than they were before Installous began so it’s possible that Dissident thought the mission was over.

The final piece of the puzzle could come on the back of rumors that a jailbreak for iOS6 won’t be forthcoming. No jailbreak for future iOSs means that Installous and indeed the completely legal Cydia can no longer function on new machines. Did this play a part in the shutdown decision? We’ll need to track down Dissident to find out more.

The closures of these Hackukous projects raise more questions than they answer but will still come as a shock to those who relied on Installous for their software fix. Time to start shelling out a few cents an app it seems – luckily that’s not going to break the bank.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Hackulous are most well known for two products. The first is Apptrakr, a web-based index of cracked apps which has between 10 and 11 million unique users per month. The second, Installous, is a piece of software resident on 8 to 9 million jailbroken Apple devices which allows the installation of software found via Apptrakr and elsewhere.

Hackulous admin Dissident has just announced a number of new developments and innovations. The first related pair are upgrades to ‘Clutch’, a piece of software which allows the cracking of iOS software, and its GUI called Crackulous. The second is ‘Overdrive’, a piece of code which stops applications becoming self aware.

Apptrakr is also receiving various upgrades but an update included in the new Installous 4 package is of particular interest.

While Apptrakr has an absolutely huge database of cracked apps, by no means does it index all apps currently available. However, as millions of Installous users are also buyers of apps from the App Store, most titles will already be installed on their collective devices. But how can they be shared with the world?

In the past, owners of App Store apps would have to crack the software using something like Clutch then patch, test, upload and submit it to Apptrakr in order to grow its database and enable others to download. Not surprisingly the learning curve dissuaded all but a tiny minority from even trying.

Described by Dissident as a kind of ‘reverse BitTorrent’, Mobile Hunt is a clever way of utilizing an existing network of millions of peers to provide a solution to the app supply bottleneck.

“Essentially what will happen is when you’re using Installous you’ll get a little pop up that says ‘Hey, you have an application that Apptrakr doesn’t. We will add the application to a queue in the background (if you say yes) and it will start uploading tiny pieces of it, kind of like a torrent, up to the cloud’,” Dissident explains.

So, unlike BitTorrent, where one starts with a single file that multiplies the more people jump on the torrent, with Mobile Hunt the start point is perhaps hundreds or thousands of copies of the same piece of software, and little tiny pieces of each upload from each person’s device to the cloud in order to make one final copy, which will then become available from Apptrakr. From there it will be available for millions to download.

The other announcement from Hackulous is also very significant. On January 6th, Apple will release the Mac App Store and before it’s even released, Hackulous have cracked its security.

By removing DRM from products available from the Mac App Store with a new product called ‘Kickback’, Hackulous will be able to offer the same kind of free download service for Mac as they do for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will do so immediately.

“We don’t want to release kickback as soon as the [Mac App] Store gets released. I have a few reasons for that,” Dissident explains.

As mentioned earlier, Hackulous and its suite of services exists to provide a try-before-you-buy trial service and this was only needed when Apple allowed “tons of crap” software on the App Store.

“Most of the applications that go on the Mac App Store [in the first instance] will be decent, they’ll be pretty good. Apple isn’t going to put crap on the App Store as soon as it gets released. It’ll probably take months for the App Store to actually have a bunch of crappy applications and when we feel that it has a lot of crap in it, we’ll probably release Kickback,” says Dissident.

“So we’re not going to release Kickback until well after the store’s been established, well after developers have gotten their applications up. We don’t want to devalue applications and frustrate developers.”

So how long will it take for the Mac App Store to become polluted enough for Kickback to be released? Maybe February…..

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The timing of this announcement is perfect, as rumors persist that the iPhone 4/iOS 4.x jailbreak will be released today. As soon as it does, many hundreds of thousands of owners will rush to carry out the procedure which will allow them to run 3rd party software on their device completely legally.

UPDATE: Jailbreak has just been released and it is web-based – http://jailbreakme.com/

Of course, free pirate copies of material otherwise available from the App Store also become available, largely through the Installous app which is installed via Cydia, a piece of software included in the jailbreak package.

Installous is developed by the Hackulous community which is run by a guy called Dissident. TorrentFreak hands you over to him for the rest of this article.

Guest article from Dissident of Hackulo.us and apptrackr – undoubtedly the web’s largest resource for cracked iPhone Apps.

Firstly, I would like to thank TorrentFreak for giving me this opportunity to publish this article on their website. My name is Dissident, and I am an administrator of a website called Hackulous — an online community which has, for the last two years, been working to circumvent the DRM on Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad products.

Apple has always been very stringent regarding what programs can be run on these devices. These products are distributed with a tightly locked down operating system and are forced to work only with Apple-approved software available on the iTunes App Store. Since the beginning, even before the advent of Apple’s portable iDevice product line, “jailbreaking” has been the attempt of talented reverse engineers to find ways to exploit the devices. The goal is to break out of the software jail imposed by the operating systems, so as to run any kind of software that users want on their devices.

Jailbreaking the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad is no different. Several millions of owners of Apple’s devices have used jailbreaking to push the boundaries of what is possible with their devices. Installer (now defunct), Cydia, Icy (also defunct), and Rock are well-known examples of distribution centers that jailbroken devices can access to obtain homebrew applications that really add a lot to the overall experience.

For example, Winterboard, the application that allows theming of the iDevice’s interface, is one of the most often downloaded items and is marked on every “must-have” list of homebrew applications. For iPhone users displeased with the subpar Messages app that came with the iPhone OS, there are at least two texting apps on Cydia, biteSMS and iRealSMS, that add features such as Drafts, Quick Reply, Quick Compose, and more. Before Apple introduced their backgrounding and folder features in iOS4, we already had Backgrounder and Categories. These are just a few examples of the freedom of customisation jailbreaking afforded us.

Eventually in 2008, Apple unveiled the App Store, a virtual marketplace for developers to sell their applications via an Apple-controlled channel. Since the beginning, one of the key missing features of this store has been a trial service, or even a refund policy. Considering that many competitor products have had these policies for years, some would expect them to be unquestionably employed by Apple, yet two years later in 2010 people are still being swindled by sub-quality applications.

The iPhone “cracked app scene” started from the idea of people being able to trial apps before sinking their money into them; an especially useful and welcome exercise considering that such a large number of apps on Apple’s App Store are pointless, underdeveloped, overpriced, and with deceptive descriptions to boot. In the two years that have passed, our community has enjoyed an explosion of activity resulting from the interest of many to trial iPhone apps. Many of our users appreciate the opportunity to be able to make a confident and informed decision when handing over their money for apps.

Understandably, the developers who paved the way for jailbreaking are not too eager to join our community. These are the forefathers of the iPhone jailbreaking scene, who have released tools such as Pwnage Tool, redsn0w, and Spirit, and they are collectively known as the iPhone Dev Team. The team members have shown disinterest in our community, citing that a considerable portion — perhaps a majority — of our users are pirates.

Various Dev Team members recently did an interview on TWiiPhone, and the consensus among them was that they detest anything remotely associated with piracy. They have stated that they believe piracy gives jailbreaking a bad name, and while I concede that point of view, I would like also to present three important details that demonstrate that Hackulous’ brand of activity is not causing as much damage as the Dev Team and everyone else may think.

1. Most of the pirates who use our services do so because they simply cannot afford to purchase the applications. One of the prominent members of the Dev Team, planetbeing, described the pirates who use our software as “predominantly in their early teens where money is scarce and time is abundant.”

Since these users have never had any intention or capability to purchase the applications whether or not cracked versions are available, developers of these apps are losing significantly less than what they believe they are to these people.

2. Another portion of our pirates are those who have the capability of purchasing iPhone apps, but not the desire. These pirates typically do not “need” any particular application for free, they just want whatever application that can provide a certain level of entertainment for them.

They are not so much making the choice between purchasing or pirating software A, but rather making the choice between pirating software A or B. So again, the profit lost attributed to this tribe of pirates has been overestimated; these pirates would not have forked over their money anyway, they would just move on.

3. Over three million devices are running our software, Installous, to download and install cracked iPhone apps. The people using these devices are Apple customers who are likely to purchase another device, purchase new Apple products, or refer their friends to Apple. As I have stated before, the people who use our services to trial iPhone applications actually help Apple more than they hurt it.

Why, you ask? If a majority of our three million users are pirates, the value in Apple’s devices is significantly higher: These millions of users, who would otherwise be incapable or unwilling to purchase apps, now have a rich source of entertainment that greatly enhances their experience with their devices.

Apple does not like piracy, but as long as piracy increases the value of jailbroken iPhones, they have no need to be passionate about stopping it. As music has shown Apple and Steve Jobs himself, DRM can always be defeated. Apple is in fact embracing piracy for what it can accomplish for their company.

4. Piracy also helps to expose an application to the masses, much like music piracy helps artists and bands get more publicity. Without cracked app sites like apptrackr, a lot of applications would be left languishing in the pits of the App Store among the rest of the 240,984 apps (at last count) available.

Only the top 100 free and paid apps and the top 10 free and paid apps in each of the 20 genres, summing up to 600 apps, get any considerable notice. A large number of apps only get to enjoy recognition from the people within the developers’ circle of influence. When they are placed on apptrackr, however, they are exposed to an extensive audience which make up millions of unique visitors a month.

Plenty of these visitors might have never discovered these apps if not for them being placed on apptrackr. Now that they have, developers stand to gain an arbitrary percentage of profit from those who choose to buy the app after trialing, rather than to not get any customers at all.

To sum up my points, the negative impact of piracy on the market has been overstated. Contrary to what people see on the surface, piracy is not truly as detrimental as developers claim. Even Apple is likely to be more concerned with unofficial unlocks than our DRM circumvention.

This article is not in any way an attempt to convince anyone, much less the Dev Team, to condone piracy, but more to demonstrate that the population has no need to feel that piracy is corrupting the concept of jailbreaking.

The community at Hackulous, for one, has never sought to blur the lines between jailbreaking and app trialing, and we do put in effort to educate our users about the difference. Our core community has always embraced the true spirit of jailbreaking, which is to free our devices from the grips of Apple’s closed platform, and while we parttake in circumventing Apple’s DRM, we have always disapproved of associating piracy with jailbreaking.

In addition, none of the Hackulous staff are pirates and our moderators are advised not to discuss nor encourage piracy. Appulous, Installous, and eventually apptrackr, were created purely for trialing purposes. I am aware that most people think we say this to save face or for plausible deniability, but it is the honest truth. We know that a large portion of our users do not use our services as intended; this is an unavoidable fact of life. There is nothing we can do about this except to shut down our services entirely, but to be frank, our legitimate users mean a lot more to us than the pirates who use our software for unintended purposes.

I would like everyone to understand and acknowledge that we would not be operating our websites and creating the tools if we were to believe that pirates are truly harming Apple or its developers. We have our conviction that they are not, and that is why we persevere.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The site was run by a very well known iPhone app cracker called ‘kidmoneys’ and it’s believed the message currently on the site’s homepage is his;

I won’t crack apps/games anymore

People who used the Installous application from Hackulo.us will be familiar with Appulo.us. Functioning a little like a torrent index, Appulo.us carries links to cracked iPhone applications hosted elsewhere, without carrying any of its own content. It’s believed that kidmoneys and other crackers from iTunes Card VN supplied around 60% of everything added to Appulo.us each day.

TorrentFreak spoke with most_uniQue, a cracker from Hackulo.us who explained the significance of the closure. “iTunes Card cracked about $1000-1500 worth of apps each week,” he told us. “About 50 apps a day.”

Of course, all these apps have to be purchased from the Apple App Store before they can be cracked and distributed, but we were told that some crackers use cracked iTunes gift card codes to make their purchases from Apple.

A physical card isn’t needed, the code from a card is enough and these are generated by crackers with the use of keygen-like software. most_uniQue told TorrentFreak that a $1000 worth of credit can be purchased for $50 and a quick search turned up offers even lower than that.

Since all requests for Apple apps were fulfilled on the iTunes Card site (kidmoneys had 23K+ ‘thanks’ from users), the speculation is that they used cracked iTunes gift cards to fund the purchase of the apps. TorrentFreak was told that many of the most expensive apps did in fact originate from the iTunes Card website.

Although it seems to be the end of the road for iTunes Card VN, some of the residents have already moved on to a new home ready to crack another day. Indeed, a brief look at Appulo.us today shows plenty of new apps.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.