Access iPhone / iPod Touch Files via SSH

When we just cure the iPhone / and connect it to the PC or Mac we ask ourselves, why can't it be used as an external drive? This is one of the ways to see everything on the device.

We will have already heard about ssh, but if not, here is the definition: SSH (Secure SHell) is the name of a protocol and the SCHEDULE that implements it, and serves to access remote machines through a network. «Wikipedia»

It is very important as we learn about new things for the Device to be able to enter its file system, including being able to install apps (I will deal with this later), and do many more things; let's start…

What do we need?

1º An iPhone or iPod Touch with jailbreak (or Jailbroken) and that has Open SSh installed (we already saw how to install it in a previous section)

2º A PC with some program installed that allows SSH communication, there are several but in this case we will use WinSCP, you can download it from Here, install it.

3º Being both iPhone or iPod Touch devices and PC under the coverage of the same Wi-Fi network or also the PC can be connected to the network via cable, but the iPhone must be connected via Wi-Fi; You should definitely have a Wi-Fi network in your house or in the place where you are going to connect.

Now that we have what we need, we are going to enter the File system:

- We connect to the Wi-Fi network with our iPhone or itouch, when the router is connected, it assigns us a IP adress we go to settings (Settings)> Wifi and we will see something like this:

you touch on the network to which you are connected and you will get this:

in my case it is 192.168.1.5 but write down the one that appears there because we will need it.

-Now we go to the PC which must be connected to the same network as we said, also, we have already installed WinSCP, we open the program, and we will see this:

- In the Host name field we put the IP address of the iPhone that we pointed out previously, x example: 192.168.1.3 and in the User Name fields: root Password: Alpine (for firmware 1.0.2 the password is dottie), we leave the port field in the default: 22, we click on Login and it will connect with the iPhone and we will see the file system like this:

- Make sure that the iPhone is not hibernating and if you are going to be viewing the files for a long time, it is best that you go to Settings> General> Automatic Lock and leave it at Never because if the iPhone is deactivated, communication by ssh is not possible .

- To see the root of the system, click on the icon in the form of a folder and with the symbol / in winscp.

Note: For Mac users the process is very similar with the difference that the program to use is Cyberduck, for those who do not know it, they can go to the author's website http://cyberduck.ch/

- We must be very careful when we are inside our iPhone putting everything we can think of because we can spoil the system if you do it irresponsibly and you will have to restore it, although it is never useless, but you will have to restore with iTunes and how you know that means losing photos, videos ... and starting over as when it was new.

We already know how to establish SSH communication with our iPhone or iPod Touch device, now we can access the file system whenever we want.

In later sections we will learn how to install applications and give 755 permissions so that they are executable; a different way than installer to install applications.