Fixing Mac & iPhone hotspot USB tethering

Ever since iOS 5.1 & iTunes 10.6 updates the USB tethering has been broken.

As I have had to waste few hours fixing the issue every time iTunes gets updated again – with the broken
implementation – it is a high time I posted the solution that works for me for future reference.

This post was written when I had iOS 6.1.3 on iPhone 4, iTunes 11.0.5 and OSX 10.6.8 on Macbook Pro.

Steps to fixing it:

0. Make sure you can run sudo. If not, ask for your helpful company administrator to do this for you.

1. Download http://www.mediafire.com/download/zo22n2u2eml78vc/AppleUSBEthernetHost (md5: a817e7413bd3df29594c187e64859045)

2. Take a moment to consider the wisdom of downloading unknown content from public internet and copying it to your /System directory with root privileges.
Even though you can verify that you are using the same file as I am, you have no guarantee that I am not malicious.
Actually I’m just sloppy, and having weighed the risks and benefits of using an unknown, unverifiable file, I’m going with whatever gets me back to working quickly. Last time I did this, there were no noticeable side effects.

3. Replace the kernel extension contents with what you just downloaded:
sudo cp ${DOWNLOADS}/AppleUSBEthernetHost /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext/Contents/MacOS

4. Fix the permissions for the file:
sudo chmod 644 /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext/Contents/MacOS

5. Reload the AppleUSBEthernetHost kernel extension (if this seems a bit too magical, just restart your computer):
cd /System/Library/Extensions
sudo kextunload AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext/
sudo kextload AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext/

Works for me!

References

DopeyDupes post on Apple forums
Kernel extension loading