Apple By Ryan Whitwam Jun. 4, 2014 1:31 pm
It’s par for the course to hear about the first (messy) jailbreak for a new version of iOS shortly after the beta builds are made available to developers. Noted iOS modder i0n1c was originally optimistic that it would only take a few hours to get his exploits working on iOS 8, but has since discovered that Apple’s system root protections have been greatly enhanced. This is just the latest case of Apple making jailbreaks more difficult.
Apple has been playing a cat and mouse game with jailbreakers ever since the first iPhone was released in 2007. The community finds a security hole, Apple patches it. This is what any software company would be expected to do, though Apple has gone a step further in the past by claiming that jailbreaking is a violation of its EULA. With iOS 8, Apple might finally be making it difficult enough to jailbreak that the practice becomes little more than a niche for consumers.
Jailbreaking is already on the decline — some estimates of jailbreak usage in the early days of the iPhone were as high as 30%. No matter who you ask, it’s nowhere near that now. That’s partially because jailbreaking is harder now, but also because Apple has added many features of jailbroken iPhones to the core of the OS. There is simply less reason to go to the trouble anymore.
To be clear, a jailbreak is going to happen — no platform is completely secure. It’s simply a matter of how messy the exploits are, and whether or not people will actually want to use them. More importantly, as the difficulty in uncovering reliable jailbreak exploits goes up, they become substantially more valuable. Someone who finds an iOS 8 exploit could potentially sell it to a security forensics company for a substantial chunk of change rather than give it away to the community.
The casual jailbreaker could become a rare breed very soon.
More...
Apple has been playing a cat and mouse game with jailbreakers ever since the first iPhone was released in 2007. The community finds a security hole, Apple patches it. This is what any software company would be expected to do, though Apple has gone a step further in the past by claiming that jailbreaking is a violation of its EULA. With iOS 8, Apple might finally be making it difficult enough to jailbreak that the practice becomes little more than a niche for consumers.
Jailbreaking is already on the decline — some estimates of jailbreak usage in the early days of the iPhone were as high as 30%. No matter who you ask, it’s nowhere near that now. That’s partially because jailbreaking is harder now, but also because Apple has added many features of jailbroken iPhones to the core of the OS. There is simply less reason to go to the trouble anymore.
To be clear, a jailbreak is going to happen — no platform is completely secure. It’s simply a matter of how messy the exploits are, and whether or not people will actually want to use them. More importantly, as the difficulty in uncovering reliable jailbreak exploits goes up, they become substantially more valuable. Someone who finds an iOS 8 exploit could potentially sell it to a security forensics company for a substantial chunk of change rather than give it away to the community.
The casual jailbreaker could become a rare breed very soon.
More...
