The only time Apple publicly acknowledges the jailbreak community is when, semi-tauntingly, it lists the people responsible for finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in iOS that have now been patched.
In the aftermath of its just-released iOS 8.1.1 update, Apple adds a mention to its security logs of the China-based PanguTeam, who discovered three vulnerabilities fixed in the latest update of Apple’s mobile OS.
One vulnerability relates to a state management issue in the handling of Mach-O executable files with overlapping segments. Another concerns a validation issue in the handling of certain metadata fields, and a third concerns a permissions issue with the iOS debugging functionality, which allowed the spawning of applications.
All three vulnerabilities have now been patched.
Pangu’s iOS 8 jailbreak arrived shortly following the debut of iOS 8.1. Not long after, the jailbreak was given the stamp of approval from Cydia, the jailbreak version of the App Store. It has also been made available on Mac, having been Windows-only before then. The whole process takes around five minutes to complete, although it is no longer available to anyone who has upgraded to iOS 8.1.1.
Apple has previously credited the evad3rs jailbreak team with helping it to discover weaknesses in iOS that have been fixed in updates.
And so Cupertino’s cat-and-mouse game with the jailbreak community continues…
Via: iDownloadblog
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
6 responses to “Apple credits Pangu jailbreakers for helping make iOS 8.1.1 even more secure”
Interesting — so how likely is it that at some point Apple will make iOS so airtight that there is no way to jailbreak it? Or does every major release come with new vulnerabilities to exploit?
I think 8 versions of iOS later its abundantly clear that hackers will always find a new exploit to jailbreak, no matter how many times Apple patches it up. Last jailbreak for iOS7, people were talking about the end of jailbreaking because it took evaders so long to accomplish (6+ months). But with the Pangu team jailbreaking iOS8 in a matter of weeks, its clear that jailbreaking is here to stay.
Not weeks months. Remember iOS8 has been available since June. It’s only been publicly released since september. They’ve been working on the Jailbreak since iOS7, and had tons of time to test iOS8.
True, but I was just talking about release after the public release, not betas. As for working on the jb since iOS7, also true, but they had to start over with new exploits once iOS8 patched the previous exploits.
Every time there is a major code change, there is a chance of introducing a vulnerability. You’d think that by IOS 8 that Apple wouldn’t have any exploits at the lock screen, but almost every new major version has somebody bypassing it within days of release, and then patched in the x.0.1 release.
Other than pirating apps, jailbreaking doesn’t add enough value for most people anymore. Themes are for 12 year olds. Pirates and kids don’t pay enough money to support Cydia or keep hackers interested. In the past, more hackers meant quicker jailbreaks. Now we wait for months.
Eventually the difficulty to hack will surpass the need to hack. We’re not there yet, but we’re close.
That’s a ridiculous comment. “For 12 year olds”? While there are many ridiculous themes created to change the look of the device, many (like me) use jailbreaking for productivity only. Sorry but I like the ability to be able to make my phone easier and more personal for me to use. I like to use tweaks to save abysmal battery life on my iPhone 5s, be able to tether with my unlimited plan at no additional charge, listen to the radio without it shutting off in 30 minutes, make my icons smaller so I can see them all at once, read in the dark without straining my eyes (f.lux) extend the dock on the bottom to access more frequently used apps quickly, put a folder inside a folder, see the size of my pictures and apps, create extra storage space, see the date on my status bar, etc.