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State of jailbreak: March 2016 [Video]

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State of Jailbreak March 2016

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a new jailbreak release hit the scene publicly. Sure, we’ve seen teased images of jailbreaks from some well-known hackers within the community, but the last publicly available jailbreak tool was shared back in October 2015. Since then, iOS has been updated several times, and Apple has closed the signing window for iOS 9.0.2, the last firmware susceptible to a publicly released jailbreak tool.

Even though it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen a jailbreak, that doesn’t necessarily mean things have slowed down on the community side of fence. In fact, many new jailbreak tweaks continue to land on Cydia every single month. We also now have tools like Extensify that allow us to tweak some of our favorite App Store apps on non-jailbroken iPhones. Yes, jailbreaking has hit a bit of a lull, but developers and community enthusiasts continue to contribute on a regular basis.
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evasi0n jailbreaks record 7M iOS devices in four days

We previously told you that around 1.7 million people had used the new evasi0n tool to jailbreak their iOS device, according to stats from Cydia installs. Today, we get a little update on the progress: Jay Freeman told Forbes that Cydia recorded over 7 million devices, as of last night, and “insanely more new traffic” than the release of iOS 5’s Absinthe jailbreak tool and others before it.

As of Thursday night, Freeman’s alternative app store had received visits from 5.15 million iPhones, 1.35 million iPads, and 400,000 iPod touches that were jailbroken with evasi0n, the first jailbreaking software for the iPhone 5 and iOS 6.1.

Freeman says that evasi0n has brought Cydia “insanely more new traffic” than the release of the jailbreak tool called Absinthe that worked on some versions of iOS 5. And even Jailbreakme3, the popular web-based jailbreak released by iPhone hacker Comex in the summer of 2011, was only used on 1.4 million devices in its first nine days online

JailbreakMe founder Comex hired by Apple

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Comex, the founder of JailbreakMe, has just announced on Twitter that he’ll be joining Apple as an intern next week. From the sound of his tweet, it looks like Comex will be taking a break from the jailbreak community. It’s sad to see him go, but we’re pretty sure he’ll hand over the reins of JailbreakMe to someone else. We wish him the best of luck at Apple!

Tweet 1: It’s been really, really fun, but it’s also been a while and I’ve been getting bored.
Tweet 2: So, the week after next I will be starting an internship with Apple.

Interestingly, we heard this just a few weeks ago:

  Forbes concludes, Apple should be offering up an internship to Allegra.
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Apple issues JailbreakMe-unfriendly iOS 4.3.4

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Apple released iOS 4.3.4 (build 8K2) fixing a PDF exploit which makes possible wireless jailbreaking by visiting the JailbreakMe.com web-tool  in mobile Safari. The exploit could also be used to inject and execute any code on iOS devices. The iOS 4.3.4 download is now available through iTunes for the iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad 1 and 2 and third- and fourth-generation iPod touch. Verizon iPhone users will get the same fix via the iOS 4.2.9 update (build 8E501). Contents of the Verizon iPhone firmware update is outlined in this support document (here for iOS 4.3.4 for all other devices).

Stand-alone downloads below:


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Swype on iOS? Only if you are jailbroken

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op4t3h10vMU]

iPhone Download Blog posts a nice video of Swype on Jailbroken iOS

Swype is a keyboard system for touch mobile devices that enables users to type faster in some instances because it doesn’t require as much ‘tapping’. Apple has shown little interest in putting Swype on iOS devices however.

That’s where the jailbreaking community comes in.  Andrew Liu (@WyndWarrior) is working on porting Swype to iOS. With the recent Jailbreakme.com, making it incredibly easy to jailbreak your phone, many others will try it (remember it is in beta).

If you are the adventurous type:


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Jailbreakme.com passes a million Jailbreaks

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We were the first ones to report that Jailbreakme.com was live last night at about 2am ET.  That was about 20 hours ago.  Just a few minutes ago, @chpwn tweeted that they’d surpassed a million jailbreaks on Jailbreakme.com.  That’s a pretty impressive distribution vector.

Although there was some concern going in that Comex was rushed in this jailbreak, commenters seem to be impressed with the results.  The process couldn’t be easier as the below video shows.


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Famous jailbreaker Geohot joins Facebook team

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg]

TechUnwrapped is reporting that famous jailbreaker George Hotz, known as Geohot, is now working at Facebook. You may know Geohot for getting in a lawsuit by Sony for his Playstation hack and his jailbreaking tools like purplera1n, blackra1n, and limera1n. In recent months Geohot has been off the map after the Sony ordeal, but it appears now he is back (unfortunately not as a rapper).

Techmeme’s Gabe Rivera did some digging on Geohot’s Facebook to confirm TechUnwrapped’s story. It appears Geohot joined Facebook as a Software engineer in May, but he announced the news June 17th. June 22nd he said, “is Facebook is really an amazing place to work…first hackathon over.” What do you think he is doing as a Software Engineer? Perhaps he’s working on the secret Project Trojan…er Spartan.
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