This talk explains some of the things that have been going on in the mobile phone hacking world for a number of years. SIM unlocking and other types of hacking associated with it have been extremely lucrative for many embedded systems hackers, but the topic has never really been covered by the media, whilst things like "carding" have been because of its illegality. Some of the artificial protection mechanisms such as SIMlock have actually driven hacking research, with end users actively seeking to remove the locks and pay people to do it. This hacking community has steadily evolved and merged into the rooting and jailbreaking scene, where again ordinary end users are more than willing to stump up cash to break the mechanisms to free their device, whilst unwittingly driving mobile phone theft. The ultimate result is an arms race between the hacking community and the device security engineers. A race of engineering wit and skill, combined with some war-like strategy and tactics.