IOS 4.1 Jailbroken Already

mspohr writes "Just hours after Apple released iOS 4.1 to great fanfare, hardware hackers found a way to jailbreak devices that run the new operating system. More surprising still, there doesn't appear to be anything Steve Jobs can do to stop them in the near future. The exploit in the boot ROM of iOS devices was first announced by iPhone Dev-Team member pod2g. It was soon confirmed by other hackers, who said that because the exploit targets such a low-level part of the operating system, Apple won't be able to stop jailbreakers without making significant hardware changes."

Comments

Apple's security

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple always says Mac OS X and Apple products are secure, non-exploitable and virus free. How are there exploits then?

Re:Apple's security

[Anonymous Coward]

this is absolutely incorrect, the first gen ios4 exploits were remote exploits.

Re:Apple's security

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

is it that Apple lock their devices down too much? Or that they are not locked down enough? Can't be both...

Why can't it be both? Can't you grasp the difference between too locked down for the owner and too locked down for an attacker?

Let me put it in the same way (including misspellings) as your original post:

Suckure from what? External sources?--Generally not enough. Secure from the owner modifying the software directly?--Generally too much.

Re:Apple's security

[oztiks]

Absolute fantasy! Apple is unprepared for security and the way the iPad has been cobbled together is proof of this. Their software hasn't been targeted until now and the exploitation of Apple products _are_ becoming more commonplace.

You cant compare it to how Windows was back in the day or any notions like that because Apple is currently going through what Microsoft was unprepared for back then but with a more sophisticated mindset and strategy (crackers / cyber-criminals are smarter these days). Apple based itself on UNIX around the time the internet became common in the household as a result saved them a fair amount of grief but hardly places it as a more secure product in todays world.

The lack of Apples popularity had always kept them in niche marketplaces until now but the iPhone now makes them commonplace and popular enough to mean money for blackmarket hacking. This doesn't mean its more secure its totally the opposite. It means it's less secure because it hasn't been targeted until now. In fact I'd spout there are just as many exploits in the wild for iOS and MacOS as there is for Windows Vista in present day.

For companies a high patch rate and focus on security means a hampering of innovation because development resources becomes focused on fixing problems rather than creating new features. Truthfully, the iPad is a product of that hampering, from my experience its like using a half built house with its scaffolding still attached too it and for the iPhone 4 even the sales people at the phone store cant find feature lists convincing enough to get me to upgrade from a 3GS to a 4. The question "why should i upgrade?" doesn't get answered with a solid response.

Did we get any of those iPhone 4 sales through the roof crap this month on /. ? No Thank God!!!

Re:Apple's security

[sarhjinian]

Adobe's shitty PDF specification that allows embedded fonts to be stored in documents

There's nothing wrong with this. The intent of PDF is to make a document viewable on every platform in the same way and you can't do that without either embedding fonts or re-rendering fonts as outline drawings (which wastes a lot of space, makes text editing and markup impossible, and increases complexity).

Come on guys

[dbIII]

Just get a Nokia N900 that already gives you full root access and lets you boot into other stuff anyway without encouraging this closed and inferior platform.

Re:I've never understood why they fight this...

[BasilBrush]

Because content providers like to be paid for their products. If you go to one of the app crack web-sites, it's amazing how so many jailbreakers can afford to buy an iPhone, but will then go to some effort to steal 99c from an app developer.