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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."
Those jailbreaks are only possible through exploits in the operating system. "jailbreak" is really an emphusium for "local root exploit" (or in some cases, "remote root exploit"). Would you rather they leave the local root exploit in the code?
Here is why jailbreaks are bad: do you really trust the code you just ran to do the right thing? It is like running a keygen as root as admin on XP (ie the default for win XP). Sure it might crack the program, but lots of those "harmless" keygen programs jnstallled other, not so harmless things like spyware and botnet clients.
The people who make these jailbreak apps do share a somewhat common lineage with the keygen scene. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those things are installing other, more "exciting" things as part if their payload. And if they aren't now, it is 100% likely somebody will. It may not be on the mainstream jailbreak download, but people are idiots and run things they download from anywhere. Download the wrong jailbreak and your iPad/iPhone will get hosed.