Jailbreak iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

On Wednesday, September 17th Apple is expected to release iOS 8. This means that there only several hours left for those who need to restore their jailbroken iPhones to iOS 7.1.2 without losing jailbreak. After iOS 8 is released, the guys from Cupertino will no longer be signing iOS 7.1.2. In this case, if a user tries to restore the device using iTunes, he will be forced to update to iOS 8.

Another important announcement is also targeted at the jailbroken iPhone users. If you want to save your jailbreak, do not update to iOS 8 as currently there’s no evidence that it is jailbreakable. Moreover, as it was mentioned above, you won’t be able to restore or downgrade your smartphone to the earlier version of iOS. If your device works fine, keep using iOS 7.

Those who have an iPhone running iOS 7.1.2 or lower can use two utilities for jailbreak, namely, Pangu or evasi0n. Whether these tools will be compatible with iOS 8 is still a question without an answer. Stay tuned for more news about iOS 8 and jailbreak.

According to the latest rumors, both Evasi0n and Pangu jailbreak utilities have been recently nominated for 2014 Pwnie Awards. This award is presented to those developers and security researchers, who find bugs or important exploits in the software. This year’s award will be given to a developer (or the developers) that made some important discoveries in the period of the past twelve months.

Both the Evasi0n and Pangu jailbreaks for iOS 7 have been nominated for 2014 Pwnie awards. The Pwnie Awards celebrate the achievements of security researchers and developers who find certain bugs and exploits. The awards cover bugs disclosed over the last year (July 2013 – June 2014).

Last year the Pwnie Award was given to a developer nicknamed Planetbeing. It is very difficult to predict whom judges will choose this year as both Evasi0n and Pangu tools for jailbreak are worth winning the award.

If to speak about me, I would probably choose Evasi0n as the people behind this product were using their own exploits and methods for jailbreaking iOS 7, unlike the authors of Pangu.

[via iClarified]

Stefan Esser (aka i0n1c), a hacker behind iOS 7.1.1 jailbreak, has explained how he managed to hack his iPhone.

According to what i0n1c writes, his jailbreak uses a new kernel bug. This vulnerability differs from those that were used previously.

Here’s what he points out in his blog (via iClarified):

This means that the exploit code can be used to break out of any application that you exploit. This is very different from nearly all of the kernel vulnerabilities used in iOS jailbreaks since iOS 4.

In case you don’t know, i0n1c on Sunday shared a photo of a jailbroken iPhone 5c with iOS 7.1.1 on board running Cydia. Another hacker, Winocm, posted a video showing a jailbroken iPhone 4.

The jailbreak has not yet been released. I think we should wait for a while.

A well-known member of the jailbreak community nicknamed Winocm will soon start working at Apple. As he tweeted a couple of hours ago, he’ll take up his new duties “later this year”. As to his position at the company, it remains unknown.

According to iDownloadBlog,

Another famous hacker is joining the ranks at Apple. Following in the footsteps of jailbreak community members Comex, and Peter Hajas, jailbreak developer Winocm announced this afternoon on Twitter that he would be joining Apple.

Winocm played an important role in development of a series of jailbreak versions. Apart from that, he took part in other important projects.

I hope that the company from Cupertino will include lots of tweaks created by third-party developers and hackers to iOS and Apple’s mobile operating system will become even better. Agree? Leave your answers below.

A new tweak has recently appeared on Cydia that lets you use your iPhone 5 or iPod touch to capture slow motion videos, even though these devices are believed to not support a slow motion mode. The tweak is called Slo-mo Mod and it is available for free on BigBoss repo.

As noted by iDownloadBlog,

One of the iPhone 5s’ flagship features, the Camera app’s baked-in slow motion mode, is now available to owners of older devices like the iPhone 5, and the iPod touch 5th generation. Slo-mo Mod is the jailbreak tweak that makes it so that slow motion mode is no longer an iPhone 5s exclusive.

The tweak can be customized and configured via Settings app. That means you can either turn Slo-mo Mod on or off or try to change some parameters to make the tweak work more efficient.

So, if you want to capture slow motion videos using your iPhone 5, iPhone 4s or iPod touch, Slo-mo Mod is definitely a worth downloading tweak.

Many people don’t like iOS 7 and this has been proven by thousands or even millions of users who complain and ask Apple to bring back the old school design. Quite obvious, nobody will do that, so the only way to make your iOS 7 device look more like the iOS 6 gadget is to jailbreak it and use various Cydia tweaks to adjust the look of the operating system.

One of such tweaks is ClassicSwitcher -- a tool developed to bring the old school app switcher to iPhones and, what is very important, to iPads running iOS 7. This tweak hasn’t yet been released, but soon it will be available in Cydia.

According to iDownloadBlog,

Not only does it bring the old school switcher functionality to iOS 7, but it brings along with it several goodies as well.

And here’s the short video, which gives us a sneak peek at ClassicSwitcher, take a look:

httpvh://youtu.be/-vhrQlIR58E

Do you like the idea of tweaked iOS 7 app switcher? Leave your comments below the article.

According to secret documents leaked by WikiLeaks not long ago, the White House has been in talks with other countries to make phone unlocking illegal by international law. And it is rather strange since in public the US government supports those who struggle for the legalization of unlocking.

As stated in the original report (via Slate):

Last week, WikiLeaks made public a portion of a treaty that the White House has been secretly negotiating with other nations and 600 special interest lobbyists. The draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty, which is on intellectual property, shows that HealthCare.gov isn’t the only tech topic on which the Obama administration has some serious explaining to do.

What’s even worse, is that the new treaty will also make jailbreaking, which is installing a different operating system on your smartphone, tablet, or e-reader, illegal, too.

This treaty is still being negotiated, so all of these issues could be addressed in the final text, but so far what has been made public demonstrates a massive and nearly unprecedented power grab by special interests rather than sound public policy considerations.

Let’s hope for the best and wait to see what happens.

This week Gareth Wright reported that Facebook’s app for iOS has a security vulnerability through which malicious users can access login credentials saved in a .plist file of the app. With a copy of that .plist file malicious users could automatically log into the affected user’s Facebook account on another device. Reportedly, the vulnerability also exists on Android devices.

Wright describes several different ways in which your login credentials could be obtained by a malicious user, including hidden applications installed on shared PCs, customized apps, or modified speaker dock that could copy your plist.

According to Facebook, the issue only affects jailbroken or lost devices, as it requires physical access or installation of a custom app on the device. But Wright and The Next Web pointed out that simply plugging into any device would be sufficient for malicious users to gather these files.

The Next Web has confirmed that Dropbox for iOS is also vulnerable to this issue. Given that two such high-profile apps as Facebook and Dropbox are vulnerable to credential theft, it is likely that other apps are also affected by the issue.

As many reports note, this method of gathering login credentials is not actively utilized in a malicious manner, and users can protect their data for the time being by not plugging their devices into shared computers and charging stations.

Vooma announced a new case for iPhone that includes a backup battery and a slot for SIM-card. The case can work with the app on jailbroken iPhone that emulates the native phone app to make calls via the external SIM card.

John Biggs from TechCrunch tried a pre-release case and noted that all the main functionality remains the same in the Vooma app, but its look and feel is somewhat different. For example, its dialer is a bitmapped copy of the native dialer screen and number and letters look slightly warped.

There are no much details, however it appears that the case works with mini-SIM cards, instead of micro-SIM cards used in the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. In addition, external SIM card can be used only for voice calls and data is likely to go through the SIM installed in the iPhone. Since the external SIM card works with its own app the iPhone’s SIM card can still be used for making voice calls even when the case is installed.

This case would be helpful for international travelers wanting to use a prepaid SIM from a local mobile carrier, without need to unlock their subsidized smartphone. To unlock an iPhone is usually more difficult than to simply jailbreak it. Vooma’s homopage offers a sign-up form to receive more information on its Peel PG920 case, but the company has yet provided no details on its availability or pricing.

It seems that jailbreaking of iOS devices become a really profitable business, at least for Kevin Lee, a George Mason University senior, who managed to earn $50,000 a year by jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones. At first, it was a hobby for him that eventually grew into a real business with 30-40 clients per week asking for jailbreak, Cydia installations, graphical customizations and “unlocks” to use the iPhone on wireless carriers otherwise unsupported by Apple.  To achieve success, Kevin posted posting a “Get Your iPhone Jailbroken Today” ad on the popular online community. That helped him to get hundreds of requests. But his business goes against Apple’s rules and as far as we know, at that moment his ad was already removed from the site.