
Is iOS7 jailbroken yet? - sethbannon
https://isios7jailbrokenyet.com/
======
phaer
Serious question: Why bother? Why is there such an interest in using a very
closed system in a way the vendor does not support if there are (more) open
alternatives?

Is it because you are forced to use an iPhone by external factors, like your
employer? Are there critical features missing from Android and all the others?
Is it just your personal preference?

I really don't mean to offend anyone, it's just that I perceive the closed
ecosystem of the iPhone as an intentional "feature" and as I personally don't
like it, I would never put my money into such a closed system just to try to
jailbreak it afterwards.

~~~
mortenjorck
While there’s still about zero percent chance of it happening in the near
term, I have to think that long-term, Apple will port Gatekeeper to iOS. It’s
a near-ideal balance of security on OS X: Non-technical users can stay in the
walled garden of the Mac App Store, semi-technical users can allow signed
binaries, and power users can run whatever they want.

I work in the mobile healthcare space, and right now, we’re starting to move
away from iOS as a platform for future projects because of the restrictions
and hassle of the App Store. We’re not making 99-cent games and artisan to-do
lists, so the fact that iPhone users are far more likely to spend money on
apps doesn’t matter to us – we need a platform that lets us communicate with
medical devices and display information for healthcare professionals without a
mercurial third party deciding what we can and can’t do.

~~~
bane
To be honest, in custom software spaces like yours, I'm surprised that iOS was
ever a platform of consideration.

~~~
RandallBrown
4 years ago what was the only decent tablet option? The iPad.

Apple's solution for running business apps and distributing them outside the
app store is actually not that bad.

~~~
junto
This is exactly my problem. I have an iPad 2. I know that if I move off iOS5 I
have to move to iOS7, which really wasn't designed with the iPad 2 in mind.

I'm now stuck between a rock and a hard place. Stay where I am and many apps
(like Spotify which I pay for) no longer work, or upgrade to iOS7 and know
that the iPad 2 just isn't powerful to run it in the same way in runs iOS5
(for which it was designed for).

I'm desperately waiting for a jailbreak so I can install iOS6, which I see as
a half way house.

The reality is that Apple are deliberately degrading older devices, in order
to make them obsolete. Of course I understand they are just building software
that is designed to run on the most current and powerful of their devices, but
the deliberate prevention of installs of older iOS versions when a user
specifically wants it is frustrating.

In hindsight I shouldn't have bought an iPad, but there wasn't a viable
alternative at the time.

~~~
tajddin
I'd tend to disagree with your assessment of iOS' performance on the iPad 2. I
have an iPad Air and an iPad 2 and quite frankly the iPad 2 crashes less and
runs more consistently on iOS 7, as opposed to my Air. It feels as though iOS
7 wasn't ready for the Air, but it has been improving with each update.

------
girvo
Y'know, I finally got an iPhone (a 4S), moving from Android and Meego (gosh I
miss my N9...), and I thought I'd probably jailbreak to get the "freedom" I
was missing. Instead, I installed iOS 7, and it does nearly everything I want
it to do.

It's not perfect, I'd like to be able to load FOSS onto it without going
through the app store (I don't trust TOR browsers in a marketplace like that),
and a few UI niggles, but for the most part I now just use my phone for phone
tasks, Siri to dump stuff into Reminders for processing later, and playing
Poker on the go. I was as surprised as anyone; I've been hacking smartphones
since the Sony Ericsson M600i!

------
SmileyKeith
Personally I've found the reasons to jailbreak have decreased more and more
over time. A perfect example for me is Control Center replacing what I used
SBSettings for.

~~~
JamesArgo
I tried to find an iOS bitcoin wallet. Turns out, Apple pulled them all from
the store because they have mobile payment ambitions - and one doesn't let
predators into ones own garden. The walled garden is beautiful, but innovation
is relentlessly weeded out by its tenders. I much prefer iOS, but I was
seriously creeped out by their anti-competitive practices. I can't run the
software I wish to, so I'm going to buy an Android phone, even though I'd much
prefer an Apple product that actually lets me run competitive software.

~~~
finnw
> ... Apple pulled them all from the store because they have mobile payment
> ambitions - and one doesn't let predators into ones own garden.

And yet Pingit is still in the app store.
[https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/barclays-
pingit/id496552142](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/barclays-
pingit/id496552142)

~~~
JamesArgo
Search for it on your iPhone. It's no longer there.

------
erifneerg
> Jailbreaking is also critical to ensuring that the disabled are able to use
> their mobile devices as easily as possible.

This reason, while good and noble, feels really wonky. From what i understand,
iOS's accessibility has much miles better then Android's accessibility
options. If their main motives is to give a better mobile experience to people
with special needs, maybe focusing on implementing these improvements system
wide changes would be time better spend.

You work hard to make these changes then iOS 7.x.y comes out and the user
updates by mistake and loses all the changes a jailbreak gives. It is this
constant fighting with the system that has made staying with iOS less
appealing these days.

~~~
cmaury
Worrying about updates is a fact of everyday life for people dependent on
accessibility features, on the OS as well as the APP level. Updates to apps
often include changes to UI, which completely change the way blind users
interact with the App via VoiceOver. This means that with every update there
is a risk of the app no longer being accessible or having to relearn the
entire interface.

It's true that Apple's accessibility features are miles better than Android's,
but they aren't perfect. Jailbreaking allows people to add the functionality
they need that isn't currently supported.

A great example of this is f.lux which is an amazingly useful app for people
with low-vision, but is not supported on non-jailbroken devices.

~~~
graeme
f.lux is single handedly keeping me on my iOS 5 jailbreak. I used to need an
hour to get to sleep at night. Now with f.lux it takes me 5-10 minutes.

Absolutely no way I'd use a phone with regular lighting now.

------
saurik
The problem I have with this website is that it attempts to change the
dynamics from one of "people who do things that are fun to make devices more
open" to one of "people who do things to win cash prizes". Meanwhile, it
changes the dynamics in the minds of the people contributing: normally, people
contribute after the fact to the teams that built something that they found of
value; under the model of this website, people contribute ahead of time, and
then hope that the thing that is released works for their specific device, and
if it doesn't they are kind of out of luck.

I've seen the effects of bounties in the Android ecosystem, and they are quite
negative. I tried to explain this to the person behind this project (Elizabeth
Stark), but she really didn't seem to care: in essence, she's currently
working on a project that is a crowd funding platform for software, and she
wants to use the iOS community as a test case; she didn't want to spend any
time thinking about the ramifications of her decisions going into the project,
and she didn't send me a response about the issues I saw with her project
until this morning (coincident with the release of her website).

~~~
starkness
Hi Saurik, I'd love to hear your response to the substantive aspects of my
email as opposed to an ad hominem attack. I didn't send it until this morning
because I was sick and traveling for the holidays.

~~~
saurik
[Some context for others: when I first was responding to the idea of this
bounty program, it was to someone else who had previously been considering
working with Elizabeth; I was contacted in a kind of after-the-fact/"FYI"
style. This was when the only real information was "bounty for iOS 7
jailbreak", without most of the extra restrictions that are now in place on
the program, such as "open source". At the time, it for example seemed clear
that evad3rs--the group that has been making the jailbreaks for the last two
years--was going to get the bounty anyway. I already had started to bring up
the incentive structure issues, and managed to get this other person to drop
his involvement with the project. My original e-mail to Elizabeth thereby only
talked about these issues, which is why this comment has to delve so deeply
into the "final" point.]

So, your e-mail seems to make four points. The first point, taking up two
paragraphs, is related to your career and your project. In these paragraphs,
you did not address any of the specific example reasons I could come up with
for why you were involved, and if anything simply raised a few more. These
paragraphs, however, are largely ignorable.

The third point (setting off the second for a minute) was the argument made to
attempt to address an incentive change on the side of the people building
jailbreaks. This argument hinges on a specific example of a previous bounty,
claiming that it did not cause the ramifications I am predicting.

> While I am sensitive to your concerns around community incentives, it’s
> unlikely that our approach will threaten them. For example, when Adafruit
> created a prize for open Kinect drivers, instead of devolving into a
> community of mercenaries, it enabled an ecosystem of Kinect hackers to
> flourish.[1]

[1]: [https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-
pro...](https://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-project-the-
ok-prize-get-1000-bounty-for-kinect-for-xbox-360-open-source-drivers/)

The problem with this argument is that it is looking at entirely the wrong
level: you are claiming that by having the driver for Kinect get constructed,
people were able to start hacking on Kinect, causing an ecosystem on the other
side of the driver to flourish. We already have that ecosystem on the other
side of the jailbreak.

Instead, we are looking at the actual construction of the jailbreaks here; the
correct analogy is to instead look at the market for construction of drivers
for closed video game controllers. What you need to demonstrate is that a
"success" for that crowd funding doesn't lead the people who were working on
that driver to end up with different incentives, or cause other people
watching to expect the same (again, in a "success" situation: I know people
who work with Kinect, and I'd never heard the driver was crowd funded, so any
community effects would be quite narrow due to the limited reach; likely as it
was so little money).

FWIW, that people's incentives change in these situations is well documented:
this isn't just my assertion, this is something you can read about in books
like "Punished by Rewards". Given that a new jailbreak is needed at least once
a year (and in a perfect world, would happen no less than twice a year), this
is critical: you are playing an iterative game, and have to think about the
ramifications on incentives not immediately, but a few steps ahead.

In reality, the community is already anticipating the release of an iOS 7
jailbreak (evad3rs has already publicly stated that they have all the pieces
they need and are just working on implementing and finalizing). We (the
community of people who use these jailbreaks: I do not build them myself)
thereby are not in a position where this bounty is going to change anything:
it is just going to change how funds are directed (5%, for example, will be
given directly to your new company, rather than all of it to the people who
build the tools) and the expectations people have related to them, it isn't
going to incentive construction of a new community that otherwise wouldn't
exist.

You then had a forth point, the goal of which was to assuage concerns that
people leaving contributions would have different expectations. This argument
was just "we state this clearly on the website"; <sarcasm>which, as we all
know, works out wonderfully in the case of Kickstarter projects: it isn't like
I've ever heard of people angry that they didn't get the thing they wanted, or
that it didn't work well, as Kickstarter is very clear that they are not a way
to preorder products</sarcasm>. You will need to come up with a much stronger
argument here... if anything, I think you've just dug a deeper hole ;P.

[my comment is apparently too long for Hacker News; given that I often write
very very long comments, I'm really surprised I've never run into this
limitation before, and so wonder if it is new ;P. however, this comment is
thereby split and I will reply with the rest]

~~~
saurik
[continuing this comment from the earlier part]

"Finally" (in the aforementioned second point), your e-mail makes the argument
for the jailbreak tool being open source. You feel like this "could open the
doors to greater community contribution, encouraging larger groups of people
to work together to solve the problems more quickly". The argument makes
sense: if jailbreaking were secretive and closed (which is a bullet you
dodged, btw: on Android, where bounties are common, jailbreak tools are not
only often closed source but techniques are hoarded and under-described so as
to win more bounties <\- you actually _need_ this open source clause to not
fall into the obvious trap) people are not in a position to learn how all of
the systems of Apple's device work in a way that would let them later build
their own tools.

Would it surprise you to find out that most of the code in a jailbreak is
already open source, and that the only parts that are not tend to be the GUI
and the specific exploit technique for that one specific version of iOS?

\- All of the libraries that are use to connect to the device in its normal
mode are licensed under LGPL (they are part of a suite called
libimobiledevice, which was primarily developed by members of the iPhone Dev
Team, and now maintained by nikias from evad3rs).

\- The libraries used to talk to the device in recovery and DFU mode are open
source and licensed under GPL (developed by posixninja, who has been
maintaining them recently under the openjailbreak project).

\- The libraries used to decrypt and modify image files (kernels, devices
trees, disks, and bootloaders) has been open source for years (developed and
maintained by planetbeing from evad3rs). The same developer (planetbeing) has
released a number of utility libraries like this, including ones to download
portions of IPSW files from Apple's servers without having to download the
whole file (this is why jailbreaks never need to distribute copyrighted
content). All of this code is under GPL.

It is thereby not just useless but insulting that in your e-mail you make the
point that "the jailbreaking teams are not an island—they rely heavily on FOSS
software in their work": the people who build these tools (which again, does
not include myself) quite often release code for large or critical parts of
their work, and almost exclusively do so under "free software" licenses.

In fact, many previous jailbreak tools have been or have become open source,
and currently the tool to jailbreak the iPhone 4 on iOS 7 (opensn0w) is itself
open source (under GPL). Now, one thing that is really interesting here: this
project (which has now existed for years) actually tried to crowd fund itself
(which, to be 100% clear, doesn't cause the same kinds of issues as a third-
party bounty program) and failed. Out of its $3,000 it got $30.

[http://www.indiegogo.com/opensn0w](http://www.indiegogo.com/opensn0w)

This, of course, flies in the face of your comment that the goal is to set a
precedent of jailbreaks being open source: and in case you think I'm playing
up one example, the iOS 4 jailbreaks from comex were open source as well; the
source code for both JailbreakMe 2.0 and JailbreakMe 3.0 were released (I
believe fairly soon after the jailbreak, but clearly as this was all years ago
"soon" is relative: there are tons of open source examples).

[http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/07/19/jailbreakme-now-
open...](http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/07/19/jailbreakme-now-open-source/)

The team behind the tool greenpois0n (which includes the aforementioned
posixninja) also open sourced much of their work as "syringe". The opensn0w
tool in fact uses a lot of this code, as have been a number of third-party
tools based on this older limera1n exploit (which, interestingly enough, was
itself released to the community by geohot giving everyone a few lines of
source code for how to implement it, as he wanted people to use that exploit
instead of SHAtter).

[http://www.ijailbreak.com/applications/greenpois0n-jailbreak...](http://www.ijailbreak.com/applications/greenpois0n-jailbreak-
now-open-source/)

The argument that people are somehow not able to learn how to jailbreak things
because nothing is open source thereby doesn't make any sense even on the face
of it; again: the only things that tend to be closed source are GUIs and
transient one-off device-specific techniques. The main reason these things
tend to be closed source is that our community has a serious problem with
scams: people like to try to charge people for jailbreak tools or claim they
have tools that work in places they don't; everyone wants to "build a
jailbreak", but in practice people just want "to take someone's tool, change
the GUI, claim it works better than it does, and then charge $20 for it".

In your mind, this seems to be related to the idea that "I don't want them
making money when I'm not making money: I want to make the money, so that's
why it is closed source", but _that just demonstrates you are seeing this
through the eyes of the wrong kinds of incentives_. You say that "getting
financial support up front reduces the perverse incentive to keep the source
closed so that other groups cannot profit from it without having built it",
but in fact that doesn't change that users will get scammed and lose money:
the argument made by the jailbreak teams has never been "you should give money
to us, not them", but instead "jailbreaks should be free". It is simply clear
that you don't understand the incentive structures already in place in this
community, even while you feel like you want to change them.

You might then argue that it is horrible that these techniques are hidden, but
that itself could not be further from the case: the people who build these
jailbreaks generally give talks about how the jailbreaks work at conferences
around the world, and they are well documented in the security community
through everything from articles on websites to entire books. (At
JailbreakCon, Nikias from evad3rs gave an hour and a half long presentation on
exactly how the iOS 6 jailbreak worked as part of a time slot that was only a
half an hour long, a story which I continue to find absolutely hilarious ;P.)

Really, the only sentence I can come up with from your e-mail that has some
weight behind it is the argument that "users of such a jailbreak will be able
to audit the changes made to the firmware of one of their most important
pieces of hardware". FWIW, this is a cause that I appreciate.

However, you are addressing an audience of people who are primarily getting
software from Apple, none of which is itself audited by the community, and
which the people you are attacking (and yes: an implication "you can't trust
these people" is an attack) have demonstrated on numerous occasions is
insecure or actively damaging (such as with the various logging and reporting
daemons). The modifications made are also fairly easy for people in the
community to pull apart: maybe not to you, but to 99.99% of users the source
code isn't helpful anyway... that doesn't mean that results are not able to be
"audited".

I feel like the best you could thereby hope for is some kind of "strife" that
you want to cause: to pit people against one another, spiting one movement
(open hardware) to help another (open software). Open hardware is a much more
serious problem that very few people are really fighting for, and iOS
jalbreaking is one of the few case examples that can be pointed to when
lobbying (such as with Congress, or the Library of Congress) for why these
freedoms are important and potentially obtaining laws to guarantee them. It
would be an absolute shame to see one of the few weapons we have in that war
be sacrificed because you felt that tens of millions of people had incorrectly
allocated their trust.

~~~
starkness
You're missing the point here—we're grateful that people in the jailbreak
community release things as FOSS, but the majority of jailbreaks as you
yourself mention are not FOSS themselves, which is part of what motivated
Chris, who proposed the prize, and myself.

It seems to me that that opensn0w campaign may have been fake (there are a lot
of those on IndieGoGo).

And to be clear, in talking to friends in the security space, the auditing the
code aspect was a huge concern, so I'm glad we can at least agree on
something. :)

We're also planning on helping to fund many open hardware projects, and I'll
actually be speaking at the SF Hardware Startup meetup tonight to solicit
ideas from the community.

~~~
saurik
> You're missing the point here—we're grateful that people in the jailbreak
> community release things as FOSS, but the majority of jailbreaks as you
> yourself mention are not FOSS themselves, which is part of what motivated
> Chris, who proposed the prize, and myself.

In other places you've stated the reason he wanted this prize was to get
software on his iPhone so he could help with some accessibility issues. This
is an incentive that aligns with long-term open hardware, not short term open
software. You can't have it both ways. If you are really dropping all of the
incentive arguments I'm making and want to concentrate on open source, that's
fine: but let's get our stories straight.

> It seems to me that that opensn0w campaign may have been fake (there are a
> lot of those on IndieGoGo).

I just contacted the developer of opensn0w: no, that was not fake, it just
didn't take off. I personally can assert to you that opensn0w (which many
people are using right now) is not itself a fake (and I'm one of the people
who generally are asked to determine this ;P).

> And to be clear, in talking to friends in the security space, the auditing
> the code aspect was a huge concern, so I'm glad we can at least agree on
> something. :)

I talked about auditing changes, not auditing code, and I even explicitly
stated that the code was not in any way a concern to someone who really knows
what they are doing, so no: we don't really agree on this :/. I have on many
occasions, in articles and talks, made the argument that open source is
overrated, and that what really matters is open hardware: that in addition to
the gap between source code and machine code decreasing over time due to
better analysis tools and frameworks, that as long as hardware is capable of
being closed off it doesn't matter how much of the code is open <\- the iOS
jailbreak community is at the front line of this particular battle.

> We're also planning on helping to fund many open hardware projects, and I'll
> actually be speaking at the SF Hardware Startup meetup tonight to solicit
> ideas from the community.

FWIW, having third-parties construct open hardware doesn't really help the
cause of forcing large companies who make closed hardware to provide means of
opening it; that said, I do appreciate that you have future goals, but it may
have been more useful to start with them.

------
SG-
I'm not anti JB or anything, and used to JB my devices all the time but for
the most part iOS has changed a lot since the early days and like others I
find I don't need to JB to use it how I want now.

I do wish you could JB the last ATV version that has been out over a year for
XBMC goodness. ATV2 is still one of the best XBMC devices out there but only
support 720p.

------
bananacurve
Would you pay an extra $8/mo to instantly have your jailbreak on every update?
Then buy a developers license.

~~~
gcb0
Nobody here or on that site have any use for rooting (jailbreak is such a
silly term). They just want to be cool.

Cory doctoraw, ifixit ceo... It's just a publicity stunt.

And everyone in this thread? They keep dumping their money happily on the
latest device. Even though ios7 does zero more than a rooted ios6 (the only
new feature that is not aesthetic is the control bar, which is better on ios6
with unofficial code anyway)

~~~
resoluteteeth
When I had an iPhone 4 I had a use for rooting: to run an ssh server so I
could easily transfer files from/to my iphone without dealing with itunes or
other special software.

However, it turned out that the real solution was just to switch to an Android
phone that not only allows me to use my phone as a drive when plugged in, but
also doesn't have the software restrictions that made running a daemon
impossible in the first place.

I haven't really kept up with ios so this might not be a problem now, though.

------
hopp_check
It might be helpful to have secondary prizes for jailbreaks for only some of
the models - i.e., maybe the 4S won't be jailbroken but all the others are;
this still deserves some commendation.

------
shijie
Just pitched in $10. I'll agree with previous comments that the reason for
jailbreaking has decreased in recent years, but I'll be damned if I don't want
root access on my phone. There's a level of control I've come to appreciate
and desire as I code and deploy software, and I'd like that to extend to the
one device I use the most in my life. The reason for me, at least, is
"freedom," even if idealized and largely inconsequential. It's the spirit of
the matter.

------
stcredzero
I think we've transitioned into a world where no one can assume that a given
device/OS combination will be jailbroken in just a few months. The state of
the art of security for physical devices will be good enough, such that only
used equipment and older versions will be jailbroken.

------
landr0id
Why can't people be patient? Jailbreaks exist for iOS 7. Be patient, and it
will be released sometime soon. iH8sn0w gave an ETA of before 2014. They're
carefully picking when to release. Don't rush things.

~~~
unfamiliar
If one is in existence why not release now?

~~~
mason55
It's possible they're waiting for Apple to finish the first round of iOS7
minor updates before they reveal the exploit they're using.

------
lelandbatey
Man, this takes me back to watching the Jailbreak community like a hawk back
in like 2008 or something when I had an iPod touch and I was waiting for iOS 3
to be jailbroken. Man, those were some really fun times.

I can remember scanning the forums for hours, knowing that there would be a
jailbreak soon, but not knowing when. I remember when the first untethered
jailbreak got released, in all it's sketchy, poorly explained glory, and
carefully going through the lengthy procedure to make it work.

Aaaahhhhh memories...

------
dimillian
I donated just to be in the leaderboard. Gamification is the solution. /bye

------
neakor
Why does it matter if it's "open" or not? Stop trying to break other people's
stuff already. We all want things our own way, so why not respect other
people's ways as well.

------
RRRA
How about encouraging people to not buy their own jail with the money?

------
eonil
It seems like making profit by jailbreaking. Apple lawyers would like this.

------
dw5ight
apparently not. sad face

