Amazon’s Kindle free 3G service hacked to allow tethering

All of the 3G Kindles give you free access to 3G mobile network connectivity, which allows you to download books to your device anywhere you can get a signal. Now it seems that an enterprising hacker has figured out how to take advantage of that free 3G to allow tethering for another device.

This hack was discovered by Andrew D’Angelo and the process is outlined on his site. It’s worth noting there are some basic requirements. First, you need to have an older 3G Kindle that has the physical keyboard. It seems that this whole business is specific to the third generation Kindle because the actual hacking process makes no specific mention of the older Kindle 2. Second, your Kindle needs to be jailbroken, so that a USB network hack can be run.

Once the Kindle is jailbroken and connected to the computer via USB, your browser and DHCP settings just need to be configured appropriately and you should be able to connect to the web via the free 3G on the Kindle. The specifics of how to get the information you need from the Kindle are outlined on D’Angelo’s site. There are a few different methods listed for going about the whole process, some easier than others.

There is an important caveat worth noting if you intend to try this and D’Angelo himself points it out on his site.

“Warning! The process by which one harnesses the Kindle’s free 3G is a violation of the Kindle 3G’s terms and agreements. In addition, the key used to access 3G is tied directly to your unique Kindle. All traffic obtained in this manner is sent through Amazon’s proxy server. Amazon knows who you are.”

Essentially Amazon will know what you are up to and could use the unique Kindle ID to brick your device. If you don’t have any strong attachements to your old 3G Kindle, I suppose it isn’t a huge loss. It could be an issue if the Kindle is tied to your Amazon account and Amazon decides they don’t want you as a customer anymore because you’ve violated their terms of service. Then again I don’t know many big companies that would be willing to turn away your money when they could just brick your device instead.

Is this something any of you are interested in trying? If you give it a whirl let us know what happens in the comments.