The iPhone Dev Team is working in a new product called Pwnage that will allow developers to bypass Apple's official distribution channel for native applications, according to a post at their Website.

"Pwnage is based on an exploit found in the lower levels of the iPhone/iTouch bootloader. We can now 'pwn' Apple by patching the device to allow unsigned code. This opens the door to unlimited possibilities," the note said. "Once your iPhone/iTouch has been 'pwned', you can do things like installing custom made .ipsw files - straight from iTunes!"

Additional technical details were provided. The gist is that Apple made some incorrect asumptions about the effective operation of the RSA signature verification for signed applications. A a result, non-Apple blessed apps can be uploaded directly to the iPhone.

Recent history has shown that the vast majority of iPhone users don't hear too much about exotic technologies like this and are even less likely to experiment with their iPhones. The recent anouncement of 100,000 developers who have signed up to distrubute applications in partnership with Apple and the many, many applications that will be available this year suggest that most users will want to take advantage of value-added of Apple's blessing and security screening process.

Even so, there are always a few who want to push the limits of their iPhone, and the iPhone Dev Team will make that kind of experimentation possible.