It’s been months since the last iOS 10 jailbreak has been released. And according to the guys that originally made jailbreaking a huge craze, you shouldn’t get your hopes up about jailbreaking your iPhone ever again.
In fact, even if you could jailbreak iOS 10, Jay Freeman — the guy who invented Cydia, which was the App Store before the App Store was the App Store — says he doesn’t recommend it.
Jailbreaking is officially dead.
For a great article detailing the rise of jailbreaking alongside the original iPhone, Motherboard got in touch with jailbreaking pioneers such as Nicholas Allegra, Jay Freeman and Michael Wang to reveal the hurdles they jumped through to break into Apple’s walled garden for the good of all iPhone owners.
“I feel like jailbreak’s basically dead at this point,” Allegra, aka comex, told publication. Revitalizing the jailbreaking scene would take a great rising hacker, he said. But the most promising one, Luca Todesco, said this year that he’s quitting the jailbreak scene.
When the iPhone came out 10 years ago, it didn’t have third-party apps. It didn’t even have a game. But thanks to jailbreakers like Allegra, Freeman (aka Saurik) and the iPhone Dev Team (a group not affiliated with Apple), the capable smartphone got pushed to the limits as jailbreakers installed third-party apps and tweaks without Cupertino’s permission.
During the prime of Apple’s cat-and-mouse game with developers, new jailbreaks got released within months of each other. Now the iPhone’s security has become so locked down, it takes several valuable exploits to pull off a complete jailbreak — and there’s little payoff for users.
No need to jailbreak anymore
“What do you get in the end?” Freeman asks Motherboard in the interview. “It used to be that you got killer features that almost were the reason you owned the phone. And now you get a small minor modification.”
The death of jailbreaking has been caused by four things:
1) Apple’s increased security made jailbreaking harder.
2) If a hacker finds a vulnerability, he or she can make up to $1 million by selling it.
3) Most of the best jailbreakers moved on to high-paying security jobs.
4) If you can jailbreak an iPhone, you’re exposing it to security vulnerabilities.
“That turns into, like, a death spiral, where when you get fewer people bothering to jailbreak you get fewer developers targeting interesting things, which means there’s less reasons for people to jailbreak,” Freeman says. “Which means there’s fewer people jailbreaking, which causes there to be less developers bothering to target it. And then you slowly die.”
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
20 responses to “Jailbreaking pioneers say iPhone jailbreaking is dead”
Admittedly, I stopped jailbreaking around iOS 7. Mainly due to Apple adding features to the OS (that I was using tweaks to get). Hadn’t really thought about it much but I would do it again to get the iOS 11 iPad dock on my 7 Plus (and soon to be iPhone 8)
Without the Jailbreakers I don’t think the iPhone would be as secure as it is today.
Neither would it have as many features, since most came directly from the jailbreak community.
“Jailbreaking pioneers say iPhone jailbreaking is dead”
The full article on Motherboard, which is six months old, has some very valid points. That said—and even though no less than Jay “Saurik” Freeman (my hero) weighs in toward the negative of a future jailbreak—the death of jailbreaking Apple devices is hardly a forgone conclusion. It depends on how interested and motivated hackers and developers are in doing it. Apple may continue to make it harder, but this has often driven clever code-writers and exploit-finders to look even closer and make clever jailbreaks and tweaks.
I’m happily running several iPads and iPhones, all jailbroken, and never plan to go back to stock unless it’s absolutely necessary. I have too many great features that will NEVER show up in an non-jailbroken Apple device.
Are we not counting the iOS 10.1 and 10.2 jailbreaks as jailbreaks? It’s been a while, yes, but not over 11 months like you say.
That’s the problem when you don’t know what you’re talking about and you don’t bother to verify anything from your source article by someone else who doesn’t fully know what they’re talking about.
Also the source article is VERY dated
These are not real jailbreak as they last for 1 week being tethered.
Same as the iOS 9 jailbreaks.
There are tweaks like Ext3nder to make it an actual untethered jailbreak, my friend.
Yeah, no.
The basis for guys like saurik and comex jailbreaking was to provide an open source and opportunity to change the look/feel and provide access for 3rd party apps. However, they maintained that they were against piracy and illegal functions that jailbreaking provided for. I think if jailbreaking is going to continue, its going to be more centered around piracy and being able to obtain paid media, apps and services for free- which is problematic for obvious reasons. Free movies, music, movies, apps, tethering and other seedy abilities like call/text/location spoofing, download/exporting capabilities and IP Masking are really the only things one would jailbreak for now other than theming. Growing up with the iPhone/Jailbreak cat-and-mouse was a lot of fun, but for me personally, jailbreaking Is dead.
I don’t think it really is that way. The interest in jailbreaking for piracy has dwindled; there’s plenty of services out there that sign apps for you (whether with a stolen or paid-for developer account), and Cydia Impactor if you don’t want to go through someone else. You can also integrate tweaks into a resigned app; it seems to be popular with apps like Snapchat and Pokemon Go. There’s still an interest in tweaks adding various useful features to the OS, but whether that percentage of people is significantly lower than a few years ago I don’t really know.
Paid off and happy the jailbreakers retire. Big business wins another round yet again. Lemmings enter the porthole to oblivion.
Technically, you’d didn’t say you don’t recommend people not jailbreak either. But i’ve changed the wording to be more satisfactory to you.
You’re an idiot. Do some research before putting false information on a site that people go through.
Get at Benjamin Stover on geniushack08?gmail/com or you call or text (860) 272-6323 to hack school web servers, inflate school grades, transcripts, hack phones, phone calls, and text messages, social network accounts, email accounts, criminal records removal, and lots more.
I strongly recommend his services, perhaps his skills would speak more for him.
This comment needs more upvotes. It clearly points out that cultofmac misquoted in the article, and it shatters one of the main basis for their argument.
Dear cultofmac,
this article contains more BS than actual facts and words please remove it due to false quotes and information. This article is a disgrace, it discredits all the efforts of the hard-working jailbreak community and gives a false vision to the future.
All the best,
Andrew
Geesh, I’d expect this type of Fake News against Trump, from CNN, MSNBC & The NY Times, but against a respected and highly renowned developer like Freeman? WOW, never thought Fake News would infect CultofMac.”
BTW, just wanted to say thanks for all your hard work Jay. As a former iPhone owner (stopped with the iPhone 4 since I discovered and liked Android better), I really appreciated all the hard work you and your team put into JailBreaking. I would claim that many of the features you provided via Cydia, were eventually copycatted into iOS. I doubt Apple gave you any credit or even royalties for your ideas, but I know for a fact, that you and your fellow developers ideas were basically poached and builded todays iOS.