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iPhone Jailbreak Uses a PDF Display Vulnerability

adeelarshad82 writes "Latest reports indicate that the website that 'jailbreaks' iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches does so by means of a PDF-based vulnerability in OS X. PDF parsing and rendering is a core feature of OS X, and there have been several other vulnerabilities in the past in iOS CoreGraphics PDF components." As Gruber points out, the proper term for this is not "jailbreak," but "remote code exploit in the wild."

5 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. Re:PDF by Revotron · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I must be missing something or having a whoosh moment, because you're totally wrong.

    PDF in this sense means Portable Document Format.

  2. Re:The new jailbreak is amazing by Darkness404 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    As opposed to running a nearly entirely closed system on your phone with a network who has helped the NSA on multiple occasions on warrantless wiretaps?

    Lets face it, the "hackers" most likely are going to be better than a power-hungry corporation which assists the government whenever possible.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  3. Re:I hear differently from Users by gringer · · Score: 1, Redundant

    It's the plural of virus

    Er, did you read the page you linked to?

    The plural virii, though common, is often considered to be incorrect, and based on a misunderstanding of Latin. There is no plural for the Latin word virus; using the native English pluralisation rules, to yield viruses, would arguably then be most correct.

    --
    Ask me about repetitive DNA
  4. Re:Does not compute... by Idbar · · Score: 0, Redundant

    C'mon! It's just part of the magic!

  5. Re:The new jailbreak is amazing by mdwh2 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    And you know to trust a random web page?

    More generally, even if it's benign, it's still worrying that there's a gaping exploit out in the wild, where many people won't know to visit this web page. (It's also irresponsible of the media to spin this is a good thing; if it was Internet Explorer, there'd be no end of criticism about how bad it was.)

    It Just Works.

    Yes, getting your phone rooted by a web page certainly Just Works.