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Apple Outs Anti-Jailbreak Update

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the longer-than-i'd-expect dept.

Stoobalou writes "Apple has issued an emergency update for devices running the iOS 4 mobile operating system. iOS 4.0.2 plugs the security hole exploited by the iPhone Dev Team to allow pain-free jailbreaking of the iPhone 4 and its manifold siblings as well as... actually, that's about it."

4 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Outing the update by tomhudson · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    *insert joke about Mac users being gay here*

    It's no joke. BTW - Ubuntu should come out of the closet a bit - they could use some of that gayness - even their redesigned color scheme is fugly.

  2. Re:Why does the submitter see this as a bad thing? by CharlyFoxtrot · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Some Android phones. And if you have a dev bootloader (ie. the folks you bought your phone from aren't assholes), there aren't any security exploits involved in the process anywhere.

    Also, the set of things you can do on an Android phone without root is substantially larger than the set of things you can do on a non-jailbroken iPhone (replacing the built-in apps, for instance).

    - Even Google's own Nexus One needs to be rooted.
    - Replacing the bootloader similarly isn't easy to begin with and not getting any easier either : "DroidX bootloader locked tight." And it will only get worse now Google itself is out of the handset game.
    - The most popular Android phones come with undeletable crapware.

    I want to like Android, I really do, but it doesn't help that most of the things people say about it are half-truths at best.

    --
    If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
  3. Re:Why does the submitter see this as a bad thing? by LateArthurDent · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    This is a massively publicized remote exploit. That is the most critical sort of security issue for an operating system. There is nothing strange about them prioritizing it.

    The problem is that they haven't patched the real security issue: the one that makes exploits desirable for users of an iphone.

    Make it so that owners don't have to jailbreak their phones in order to run whatever they might want to. Once they do that, these vulnerabilities will no longer have a beneficial side to them.

  4. Re:Outing the update by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It isn't just anti-jailbreak, it's patching a pretty serious security flaw.

    I wonder if this exploit hits the light of day if it wasn't for people having to jailbreak iPhones.

    Maybe there's something structurally insecure about an OS that requires some users to break it to use if for what they want.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.