jailbreak

Less than 24 hours after jailbreakme.com went live with an online jailbreak solution for iPad 2 and iPhone 4 users, more than 1 million iOS devices had been jailbroken. Apple, however, has stated that it will close the exploit with its next iOS update.

While the news of surpassing the 1 million downloads mark in less than a day is big for the jailbreak community, the excitement comes with a bit of impending doom. The cat and mouse game between jailbreakers and Apple is heating up, and everyone knows it.

According to @chpwn, when announcing the jailbreakme.com numbers … Read more

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Facebook set to launch "something awesome"later today

Google to drop Blogger and Picasa brands

Adobe and Avid offer deals to switchers

Steve Jobs biography gets title

iPad 2 jailbreak is live

CNET infringement case dropped

Methods for jailbreaking the iPad 2 have been out there almost since the device's release in the spring. Now, with the official release of JailbreakMe 3.0, jailbreaking the Apple tablet can be done in minutes from a Safari browser window via the JailbreakMe Web site. Other methods have typically required connecting the iPad to a computer, which then does the heavy lifting to gain root access to the tablet.

Once jailbroken via JailbreakMe, the Cydia app store is installed on the device and adventurous users can install a variety of apps not screened by Apple, as well as use a few other features. The whole process takes just a few minutes and can be done from the iPad 2--or most other iOS devices--without any other hardware.

Comex, the Apple hacker behind the jailbreak, initially broke into the iPad 2 in March, and has apparently been working to polish the JailbreakMe Web app ever since. The key is a vulnerability in iOS 4.3 tied to how the system displays PDF files. The folks at Cydia, having a healthy sense of irony and service to Apple, offer a fix for the vulnerability in their app store.

JailbreakMe's developers swear it won't damage your device or make it more vulnerable to intruders, but as always, jailbreak at your own risk.… Read more

Hacker group Dev-Team (specifically noted jailbreaker @comex) has released the latest version of its popular iOS device jailbreaking tool, available entirely online.

This comes as a great comfort to users who may have been considering jailbreaking their iPhone or iPad but were not feeling confident in their device-hacking skill set.

The site works pretty simply. Log on with the iOS device you wish to jailbreak and follow the onsite instructions to forgo Apple's iOS and install Cydia. Supported devices for jailbreakme.com:

The software hole involved in a popular method for jailbreaking Apple's iOS devices has reportedly been patched by the company as part of iOS 5, the free system software update that's due out later this year.

Digging through the beta version of iOS 5, which Apple made available to developers earlier this month, the iPhone Dev-Team--a group of hackers that targets Apple devices and is not to be confused with Apple's group that designs the iOS software--has discovered a change that threatens to close a loophole the group has long exploited.

"Those of you who have been jailbreaking for a while have probably heard us periodically warn you to 'save your blobs' for each firmware.... Saving your blobs for a given firmware on your specific device allows you to restore *that* device to *that* firmware even after Apple has stopped signing it," the group wrote on its blog yesterday. "That's all about to change."

The group says Apple has implemented a system that checks for a uniquely generated chunk of data each time the phone is restored. The problem there is that only Apple has the keys to unlock that code to let the phone boot up successfully. The end result is that jailbreaking methods that took advantage of that vulnerability could be endangered if that same system is employed in the final version of the software.

The iPhone-Dev Team notes that "there may still be ways to combat this" but that it's not showing its cards just yet, since it might give Apple time to make a fix ahead of a general release. "They've stepped up their game!" the group said of Apple's security efforts.

Apple's iPhone and other iOS devices continue to be hot targets for hackers. Ahead of the release of the App Store, one of the most popular reasons to jailbreak an iOS device was to be able to install third-party software. Even after the launch of the App Store, places like third-party app repository Cydia became destinations for developers who couldn't get their applications through Apple's approval process. Another popular reason was to unlock the iPhone so that it would work on other carriers, an option Apple now offers to U.S. buyers at a hefty price premium.

iOS 5 is due out this fall. Last week Apple released a second beta of the software to developers so they could use it to test their applications for compatibility with the OS and its new features. The first beta of the software was allegedly jailbroken by a member of the iPhone-Dev Team in less than 24 hours.… Read more

Apple's new beta version of iOS 5 has been jailbroken for the second time this week, now opening the door for users to jailbreak their iOS 5 devices using the latest version of the popular Redsn0w tool.

In a blog post today about the new jailbreak, the iPhone-dev Team, a group of hackers that target Apple devices, announced that it has released a tethered redsn0w jailbreak for iOS 5.

As with the group's first jailbreak of iOS 5 earlier this week, the redsn0w jailbreak will let users install Cydia, which allows them to use apps unapproved and unsanctioned … Read more

The next major version of Apple's iOS has been exploited less than a day after its beta release to developers.

A member of the iPhone Dev Team--a group of hackers that targets Apple devices and is not to be confused with Apple's group that designs the iOS software--announced through a tweet last night that the developer beta release of iOS 5 was susceptible to limera1n, an exploit that targets a vulnerability in the iOS boot software.

As a result, iPhone Dev Team member "MuscleNerd" said that it was possible to install third-party application installer Cydia, which lets users download applications not offered through Apple's App Store. The device used was a fourth-generation iPod Touch running the beta of iOS 5, software Apple offered up to developers following yesterday's WWDC keynote address and iOS 5 unveiling.

For proof, MuscleNerd has posted two photos of the jailbreak, one of which includes the iPod's home screen, which prominently feature the Cydia logo. Another is a screenshot from the third-party SSH iOS application, iSSH, which shows that root level access to the iPod's file system has been obtained. … Read more

Not content with Apple's App Store as a software distribution mechanism, a group of iOS developers is taking matters into its own hands by working on a tool to let iPhone users browse and install applications and system tweaks through Safari.

Spotted by the iPhone Download Blog, the new project dubbed "Lima" is the creation of the Infini Dev Team and aims to complement, and perhaps one day replace, third-party application installers already available to those with jailbroken iOS devices. The hack lets users install applications from third-party software repositories, hosted on the Web and accessed through … Read more

Want to wipe location-tracking data that's being stored on your iPhone without your permission? There's an app for that, but you've got to jailbreak your iPhone first.

Several tools have cropped up as a fix for people riled up about the fact that iPhones (and iPads) are surreptitiously logging unencrypted location-related data on the device, including cell tower coordinates, time stamps, cell operator and Wi-Fi networks used, and longitude and latitude from GPS signals--basically a when-and-where of your phone's location going back at least a year.

Police have known about and been using this information, and cellular operators have access to it and can provide it when served with a court order. But anyone with physical access to the phone (and access to a desktop backup of the data) is now able to see an iPhone owner's whereabouts over time.

The fact that consumers don't realize that their phones are recording and storing this information in clear text has come as a big surprise to many people, including consumer advocates who say it's a big privacy violation.

You can hide the data that may be on your desktop by encrypting your iTunes backups. And you can turn off GPS to stop the logging of at least that information, but that doesn't clean up any data stored on the device, and it will severely limit use of the device for location-based services like mapping. There is no way to disable the tracking, because it's baked into the operating system. … Read more