Slashdot: The Life, Death, and Legacy of iPhone Jailbreaking

The Life, Death, and Legacy of iPhone Jailbreaking
Published on June 30, 2017 at 07:20PM
From a Motherboard article: Jailbreaking is the art of hacking into Apple’s ultra-secure iOS operating system and unlocking it — and thus allowing users to customize the phone, and write or install any software unimpeded by Apple’s restrictions. At the time I met with Todesco (a person who offered jailbreaking service), in December 2016, there was no known jailbreak (for the iPhone 7) — no public knowledge of this hack — for the latest iOS version that was installed on my iPhone (iOS 10.2). The world’s first jailbreaking step-by-step procedure, discovered in 2007, was posted online for all to see. Subsequent jailbreaks were used by millions of people. At one point, there was even a website — called jailbreakme.com — that was free for all to use and jailbroke your phone simply by visiting it. […] Ten years after the iPhone hit the sleek tables of Apple Stores worldwide, and the first-ever jailbreak, that Wild West is gone. There’s now a professionalized, multi-million dollar industry of iPhone security research. It’s a world where jailbreaking itself — at least jailbreaking as we’ve come to know it — might be over.