Jailbreaking of Apple's mobile operating system has been around since the first iPhone was released. During this time, jailbreaking has gone through several stages.
It has been the preserve of bearded programmers, a popular solution for piracy, a means of distributing advertising in China, and a way to unlock a smartphone from the US.
Over the past 13 years, many interesting and curious things have happened in this industry. Now let's recall the most significant milestones and events.
The main goal of jailbreaking is to gain full access to the file system, which in turn allows you to install applications not from the App Store, hack in-game purchases, change system files, add themes and new features to iOS.
Jailbreaking the first iPhone models allowed the device to be unlinked from the carrier for use in another country. Apple did not immediately start releasing SIM-free smartphones, and people wanted to use the gadgets not only in countries where the iPhone was officially sold.
The jailbreak procedure is not supported by Apple, but is not illegal in Russia, the United States, and most other countries. After jailbreaking, the iPhone owner violates the license agreement and loses the right to technical support and warranty service.
Fortunately, the standard firmware recovery procedure restores the integrity of the operating system and removes all traces of jailbreak from the device. It is almost impossible to prove the presence of a jailbreak on an iPhone after iOS recovery.
Developers from Cupertino regularly close vulnerabilities found by hackers that allow jailbreaking.
After the App Store appeared, third-party applications began to run on the iPhone in a so-called “sandbox” The programs only have access to a certain number of system folders and data. Applications cannot control most elements of the smartphone, and they undergo strict moderation before getting into the Apple store.
After jailbreaking, this restriction is removed, applications can harm the operating system or gain access to user data. However, there have been no mass cases of account or password theft on jailbroken devices during its entire existence.
You need to take the security of your confidential data seriously and use two-factor authentication. These measures are enough to not worry about your data after jailbreaking your iPhone.
The second common argument against jailbreaking is the stability and autonomy of iOS itself after jailbreaking. On the one hand, the availability of all sorts of tweaks for cleaning and optimizing the iPhone allows you to disable unnecessary processes and extend the battery life of the gadget, but on the other hand, in the wrong hands, such tools can harm the device.
In pursuit of free space on the smartphone or an extra hour of battery life, the user can delete something necessary for iOS to work. So, a jailbroken iPhone can be turned into a “brick”.
This happens extremely rarely, and the all-powerful DFU mode allows you to restore the gadget in the vast majority of cases.
Tethered jailbreak hacks a smartphone or tablet before it reboots. In this case, the gadget will no longer be able to boot normally without outside help. It will have to be connected to a computer and loaded using a hacking utility.
This type of jailbreak was very common 5-6 years ago, it used the bootrom vulnerabilities on Apple A4 processors and earlier versions. Of course, such a hack is very inconvenient, because the gadget must be connected to the computer after switching off or completely discharged battery.
Untethered jailbreak allows you to jailbreak your device with the ability to reboot it. To remove this jailbreak, you only need to restore the iPhone firmware.
This type of hacking is the most convenient, but vulnerabilities of this kind have not appeared for a very long time.
Semi- Tethered jailbreak hacks the device until the first reboot. After that, the iPhone or iPad starts in normal mode without tweaks and third-party applications. To jailbreak again, you need to connect the gadget to a computer or run a special jailbreak application on the device itself.
This type of jailbreak has become very common in the last few years. Due to the lack of serious vulnerabilities in iOS, jailbreak developers cannot implement untethered hacking.
More and more often, re-hacking in semi-tethered mode can be done using an iOS app, which allows you to use the gadget without any restrictions.
Almost immediately after the first iPhone model went on sale back in 2007, users began complaining about the lack of many of the features they needed. The first-generation iPhone was significantly inferior to the then-popular communicators (as smartphones were previously called) running Windows Mobile and Symbian.
On July 10, 2007, just 11 days after the first iPhone went on sale, a group of developers demonstrated a hack of the iPhone OS mobile system. Many consider this date to be the birthday of jailbreak.
A group of hackers from the iPhone Dev Team demonstrated the ability to change wallpaper and ringtones on an iPhone. Before this, the Apple gadget displayed a black background under the icons and played the standard Marimba melody. A little later, jailbroken devices became able to send MMS.
Already on August 4th of the same year, the first third-party application for the iPhone appeared. It was a rather primitive game called Zune 2.
In November 2007, iPhone OS 1.1.2 was released. This update was the first to close jailbreak vulnerabilities. From that moment on, the confrontation between Apple programmers and hackers began, which continues to this day.
Some applications only allowed you to add a few third-party ringtones, others could set wallpaper on your desktop, and still others opened access to the gadget's file system from your computer.
The hacking procedure was extremely simple. It was enough to open a certain site in the browser and click on the desired button. The hacking took place automatically in a few minutes.
At the same time, third-party installer programs appeared. The most popular at that time were Installer and Icy managers. With their help, you could download third-party programs and games to your iPhone.
An important milestone in the history of jailbreaking was March 2008. That's when Jay Freeman (better known by his nickname saurik ) released the third-party package manager Cydia. The program owes its name to the codling moth cydia pomonella, whose larvae are often found in apples of various varieties.
The utility allowed you to connect third-party repositories from which you could install tweaks and applications on a jailbroken iPhone.
Initially, Cydia was inferior in capabilities to its competitors Installer and Icy, but after six months, everything changed. Saurik did a huge amount of work to make his application the most functional alternative store on the iPhone.
So in March 2009, tweak developers were able to sell their extensions through Cydia. Purchases were linked to the buyer's account for further downloading on other gadgets, and payment was made through PayPal or Amazon Payments.
The popularity of the application was so high that by the end of 2009, every tenth iPhone owner installed Cydia.
The iPhone OS 2 operating system, which was introduced with the iPhone 3G, lasted only two days. After that, the developers released a utility for jailbreaking it.
You could hack an iPhone using the QuickPwn utility. At that time, popular tweaks were add-ons that added automatic focusing and video recording to the standard camera.
And Cydia add-on developers tried to “invent” multitasking. There were several add-ons that allowed you to keep apps in the background, rather than launching them from scratch every time you tapped an icon.
The iPhone OS 3 mobile system had fewer vulnerabilities and was more secure than its predecessor. For the first time, users had to wait several months after the system was released before they could hack it.
But already in the summer of 2009, there were several utilities for jailbreaking, such as blackra1n, Spirit and limera1n. The most stable and popular program for hacking at that time was redsn0w.
Why jailbreak: In those years, users upgraded iOS and added features that made the phone smart. Many ideas were then borrowed from Nokia smartphones, HTC gadgets and other devices on Windows Mobile.
This is how the first analogues of the control panel with system switches (the SBSettings tweak), battery charge percentage, video recording and other features appeared on the jailbroken iPhone.
Almost all iPhone models on the secondary market were sold with jailbreak. It allowed to untie the smartphone from the operator and use it with another SIM card or in another country. Later, such a loophole was closed and the so-called “unlocking” by software became impossible.
Another popular direction of jailbreak was piracy. The Installous store, which existed in those years, allowed downloading paid games for free and downloading third-party applications that had not passed the moderation in the App Store.
It wasn't so much the users' greed that was the issue, but the difficulty of making purchases in the App Store. The prices of many paid games at that time were small, but the purchase turned into a real quest.
I remember how I had to create an American Apple ID account, open a PayPal account, link a virtual QIWI card to it and top it up via a terminal. And only after that could I press the coveted “Buy” button in the Apple app store.
First, there were problems with the iPhone 4, which came out with the new iOS 4. Everyone remembers the famous "antennagate", Jobs' apology and the appearance of silicone bumpers.
The company began actively developing the iPad. After the controversial first generation, it was necessary to seriously refine and improve the iPad 2.
Over the next couple of years, Apple programmers only closed the holes in the system that developers found, which allowed jailbreaking. Utilities for hacking new versions of the mobile operating system appeared 1-2 weeks after the release of the next update.
Several independent development teams released jailbreak apps at once, the most popular being sn0wbreeze, JailbreakMe, limera1n and redsn0w. After the release of iOS 5, the famous Absinthe utility appeared.
Why jailbreak was done: hacking was still used for piracy, you could download almost any paid game or program for free.
After several years of using iOS, users got tired of the standard icons and system menus. Against the backdrop of Android seething with colors and paints, many wanted a little customization. So, icons “that you wanted to lick” and skeuomorphism (the name of the style in which old versions of iOS were designed) were replaced with ridiculous design themes from Cydia. The Winterboard tweak gained popularity.
On the iPhone, they installed Android-style graphic unlock codes, experimented with widgets in the notification center and the multitasking bar. You remember the strip of icons at the bottom of the screen?
Even back then, developers added an analogue of the modern “do not disturb” mode, useful gestures for managing the system, and removed all sorts of restrictions, such as the limit on downloading applications over 3G. All this only appeared in iOS over time.
A whole group of Apple programmers were sent to strengthen the security of iOS and to quickly release updates after the appearance of jailbreak utilities.
On the other side of the barricades, three main groups of hackers worked on jailbreaking iOS 6. They released utilities redsn0w, evasi0n and p0sixspwn in turn. They “fought” not only with Apple, but also among themselves.
The jailbreak community would regularly see information about a new vulnerability that would allow jailbreaking, after which an information war would begin between hackers. Some would claim that the jailbreak would be released in a few weeks, others would cry and complain about the impossibility of jailbreaking, and still others would call for this vulnerability to be left for jailbreaking the next version of iOS.
On the one hand, such wars and competition forced developers to actively work on hacking, but on the other hand, during these years, competing groups used most of the known vulnerabilities, which could put an end to jailbreaking in the future.
Many iPhone owners literally followed the developers' official pages on social networks every day, they reported on the percentage of readiness of utilities and named approximate dates for their release. At the same time, there were so-called defectors who "leaked" vulnerabilities in iOS to Apple representatives for a reward, after which the hacking progress was reset and everything started from the very beginning.
Users first received a utility for a tethered jailbreak, and after a few weeks they had to jailbreak again to make it untethered. All this was accompanied by glitches in standard applications, non-operability of programs, and other minor bugs.
Hackers sometimes called for stopping at a certain version of iOS in order to be able to jailbreak in the future, and sometimes they suddenly pushed everyone to update before the next release, which closed the vulnerabilities found.
The iOS 7 mobile operating system, along with the transition to a new flat design, was seriously updated in terms of architecture and security. All known vulnerabilities and hacking holes were eliminated at that time.
Of the three teams working on the iOS 6 jailbreak, only one remained, the hackers constantly complained about the lack of time and the complexity of the hack. The first working jailbreak utility had to be waited for several months, and a week after its release, the key iOS 7.1 update was released, closing the hack.
Hackers who had a hard time cracking the previous jailbreak practically gave up on their work and began to declare the impossibility of hacking the new version of iOS. However, the Chinese entered the arena.
Without further ado, whining on Twitter, or universal suffering, the developers from the Celestial Empire released the Pangu utility. The Cupertino team covered up the holes they found with several system releases, but the Chinese updated their jailbreak tool over and over again.
A special feature of the Chinese utility is its built-in store of hacked applications.
Only the Chinese worked on jailbreaking iOS 8. European and American hackers lost interest in hacking or simply could not keep up with their Asian colleagues.
Jailbreak fans have been changing utilities for hacking their devices for a year. At first, the Pangu8 program was on the wave of popularity, and then it was replaced by the TaiG utility. Periodically, the PP Jailbreak program took the lead.
All programs were developed by independent groups of Chinese hackers, each of which had serious financial motivation. The thing is that simultaneously with the jailbreak, a Chinese analogue of the App Store was installed with hacked applications and a bunch of local advertising. This brought in big profits in China, which allowed stimulating the jailbreak community.
These years are considered to be the golden era of jailbreaking. On the one hand, there is a constant confrontation between Apple developers and hackers, on the other hand, there is competition between different hacking developers, and on the third hand, there is a thirst for money, betrayal and leaks of vulnerabilities by individuals.
Watching jailbreaking was really interesting back then. That's why I started my YouTube channel, sharing the most interesting tweaks, hacking methods, and other iPhone-related tricks.
Tweak developers also did not stand still and released many interesting solutions that in one form or another made it into iOS.
Why jailbreak was done: hacking during this period allowed you to seriously upgrade your iPhone or iPad. This is how Pull to Refresh gestures appeared in most applications, the convenient SwipeBack gesture, which is now indispensable in iOS, the picture-in-picture mode, which completely copied the VideoPane tweak. Even the tiled multitasking mode in iOS 7 was previously found in tweaks from Cydia.
At the junction of iOS 6 and iOS 7, some users wanted to get the flat mode from the new “seven” on an old jailbroken device, and already updated users missed skeuomorphism and installed tweaks to return the old graphics.
Jailbreak was definitely something Apple paid attention to, as many of the new features of each iOS have already been available in one form or another as extensions from Cydia.
Thus, in iOS on iPad, the "picture in picture" mode appeared, which could previously be activated using the VideoPane tweak. Launching two applications on one screen was repeated by the ReachApp tweak.
The analogue of the SearchSettings tweak is the search bar inside the Settings app. From the AUXO and Dash extensions, the Cupertino company transferred the appearance of multitasking to the iPhone.
The BattSaver tweak replaced the iPhone's default power-saving mode. The SwipeSelection tweak, which had existed for several years and allowed you to move the virtual cursor by swiping on the keyboard, was replaced by the standard, modernized iOS keyboard.
The Quick Reply extension was used to quickly respond to messages in notification banners, and the RelevApps tweak, which added icons for launching applications to the control center, was replaced by an updated bottom curtain.
Many tweak developers were left without work, the functionality of their extensions appeared in iOS out of the box.
It was during this period that Cydia creator Saurik himself repeatedly spoke about losing interest in hacking. He spent a long time updating his tweak store, leaving jailbreak fans without a convenient way to install extensions.
Creators of tweaks that didn't make it into iOS turned from garage enthusiasts into commercial developers. More and more extensions started to receive protection from hacking, special means for license control and paid updates. It was no longer enough to throw a couple of dollars on coffee for the creators of a cool extension; it was necessary to buy a new version of the tweak every year after key iOS updates.
As a result, jailbreak utilities were released for a long time, after which you had to wait for several weeks for Cydia to be adapted and your favorite tweaks to be finalized. You had to pay for large extensions, and there were fewer and fewer small and useful ones.
Of the Chinese developers, only the Pangu team continued their work, new utilities for jailbreaking Phœnix and Home Depot appeared, and the once popular hacking tool JailbreakMe was resurrected.
The final stagnation began after the release of iOS 10. Almost all well-known and experienced developers left the world of jailbreaking, interest in the topic of hacking was falling every day, and users increasingly switched to the “light side”.
At the same time, iOS had enough holes and vulnerabilities for new developers to release utilities for hacking. During the relevance of iOS 10, there were 7 utilities for jailbreaking: h3lix, Yalu, Meridian, TotallyNotSpyware, doubleh3lix, Saïgon and g0blin.
Jailbreaking iOS 11 proceeded in the same leisurely manner. In the fall, LiberiOS and Electra utilities were used for jailbreaking, and at the beginning of 2018, a new program unc0ver appeared.
During these years, developers simply could not keep up with Apple programmers and released jailbreaks with a big delay. Often, it was necessary to skip official releases and sit on the old version of iOS waiting for a new hacking utility.
Why jailbreak: Users were still waiting for a dark interface theme and used Cydia tweaks to activate it, transferred some features from the Android world and added minor improvements to standard iOS applications, for example, running the WhatsApp messenger on the iPad.
A large segment was occupied by owners of old iPhones and iPads. Apple decided not to add new software features like different multitasking modes on the iPad or advanced shooting modes on the iPhone. All of this was easily enabled and worked on old gadgets with jailbreak.
After installing the jailbreak, I had to sadly admit that many useful tweaks turned out to be inoperative due to the latest updates under the hood of iOS.
The chances of seeing old favorite extensions were getting smaller and smaller. It was very difficult to find something really useful in Cydia.
Tweaks either copied not the best solutions from the Android world, or added features of dubious usefulness.
With the release of iOS 13 and iPadOS, the Cupertino company has hammered the final nail into the jailbreak coffin. Apple gadgets learned to work with a mouse and trackpad out of the box, a dark interface theme appeared, the camera and built-in photo editor were pumped up, swipe input on the keyboard was added (Russian is still out of the question), and CarPlay capabilities were expanded. The browser, mailer, and notifications on the locked screen were seriously updated.
The most interesting thing is that many of the features were not taken from the jailbreak world, but were developed 100% by Apple. This proves that the resource of third-party developers for upgrading iOS is exhausted.
Why jailbreak was done: hacking the latest versions of iOS is still relevant for some users. So, the iPhone did not add call recording, did not allow the launch of any applications in CarPlay mode, did not implement the guest mode and convenient Safari features on the smartphone.
Here is a list of all the good reasons why you should jailbreak iOS 13.
Personally, I feel most offended by the dialer that has stopped developing. With the jailbreak tweak KuaiDial, which has existed for almost 10 years, you can add a lot of useful and interesting things to the standard iPhone application.
Many of the presented possibilities have not yet been implemented by the Cupertino company.
Jailbreak can be done on tvOS and watchOS operating systems for TV set-top boxes and smart watches, respectively.
For a long time, the system for Apple TV boxes did not have the necessary protection, and updates were not released as quickly as for the iPhone. Almost every version of the software was subject to hacking, and there were 5-6 relevant utilities from different developers for jailbreaking.
The first-generation Apple TV didn't require jailbreaking at all. The device was practically a full-fledged low-power computer (with a Pentium M processor and an Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics card ), on which you could easily install Linux, an Ubuntu build (Crystalbuntu), or XBMC.
Starting with the second generation of consoles, developers switched to Apple A4 (ARM Cortex-A8) processors and a closed modified iOS build. Then enthusiasts started working on its jailbreak.
There were many programs and methods for jailbreaking the second and third generation Apple TV models. Utilities greenpois0n, Limera1n, PwnageTool, Redsn0w, Seas0nPass, Sn0wbreeze and unthredeh4il allowed jailbreaking set-top boxes running Apple TV 4.
The Apple TV 5 operating system could be jailbroken using the programs Evasi0n, P0sixspwn, Redsn0w, Seas0nPass and unthredeh4il.
During the time of Apple TV 6, only one jailbreak utility appeared – Seas0nPass, and after the release of Apple TV 7, the developers abandoned the platform and switched to the new tvOS 9, which was installed on the fourth generation of Apple set-top boxes.
Jailbreaking Apple TV 2 and 3 was necessary to expand the capabilities of the set-top box. At that time, the operating system did not support third-party applications and had a minimum of settings. After jailbreaking, it was possible to connect the set-top box to popular streaming services, set up IPTV, view content from network storage or computers via Wi-Fi.
The first versions of the new tvOS were hacked using the then popular Pangu utility, or more precisely, its modification for Apple TV Pangu9. The vulnerabilities were quickly closed with updates and jailbreaking of set-top boxes was blocked for almost a year.
With the advent of tvOS 10, a new hacking tool appeared – LiberTV, and six months later, two independent groups of developers released the utilities backr00m and greeng0blin.
The latest generation of the Apple TV 4K set-top box was launched simultaneously with the release of tvOS 11. Three programs for its jailbreak were released almost simultaneously: LiberTV, backr00m and electraTV.
Almost all versions of tvOS 12, with the exception of the latest patching update, could be hacked using the ChimeraTV utility, and hackers have not yet hacked the most current tvOS 13.
With the advent of third-party applications for Apple TV 4/4K, jailbreaking makes almost no sense. After hacking, the user will have full access to the gadget's file system and the ability to control the set-top box via the SSH protocol. If desired, you can sign ready-made applications that have not passed censorship in the App Store and install them on your set-top box.
In fact, there are no really necessary third-party applications. There is some kind of browser for TV, several omnivorous players and games that for some reason the moderators did not like.
As for Apple Watch, the interest of jailbreak developers is even lower here. Methods of hacking and so-called exploits exist, but hacking smart watches does not provide any serious advantages.
During the times of watchOS 1-2, there were not even public utilities for jailbreaking. Almost immediately after the release of watchOS 3 in 2016, the OverCl0ck utility appeared. With its help, it was possible to hack the watch operating system up to watchOS 3.2.3.
With the release of watchOS 4, another group of developers presented their utility jelbrekTime. The vulnerability used for jailbreaking was closed with the update iOS 4.1.
There are still no public utilities for jailbreaking watchOS 5-6.
Similar hacking procedures exist in the world of Android, Windows Phone, Symbian and other mobile OS. Hackers regularly hack operating systems for XBOX and PlayStation gaming consoles, and there is also an analogue of jailbreak for Kindle e-readers.
Any operating system with limitations will sooner or later get its jailbreak, but that's a topic for another article.
Source
It has been the preserve of bearded programmers, a popular solution for piracy, a means of distributing advertising in China, and a way to unlock a smartphone from the US.
Over the past 13 years, many interesting and curious things have happened in this industry. Now let's recall the most significant milestones and events.
What is jailbreak and why is it needed
The literal translation of this operation sounds like “jailbreak”. Users and developers always try to carry out such hacking on any closed system with restrictions, iOS is no exception.The main goal of jailbreaking is to gain full access to the file system, which in turn allows you to install applications not from the App Store, hack in-game purchases, change system files, add themes and new features to iOS.
Jailbreaking the first iPhone models allowed the device to be unlinked from the carrier for use in another country. Apple did not immediately start releasing SIM-free smartphones, and people wanted to use the gadgets not only in countries where the iPhone was officially sold.
The jailbreak procedure is not supported by Apple, but is not illegal in Russia, the United States, and most other countries. After jailbreaking, the iPhone owner violates the license agreement and loses the right to technical support and warranty service.
Fortunately, the standard firmware recovery procedure restores the integrity of the operating system and removes all traces of jailbreak from the device. It is almost impossible to prove the presence of a jailbreak on an iPhone after iOS recovery.
Developers from Cupertino regularly close vulnerabilities found by hackers that allow jailbreaking.
Why jailbreak is dangerous
When developing Apple's mobile operating system, the emphasis was on stability. In the first versions of iPhone OS, there was no way to install third-party programs and games at all.After the App Store appeared, third-party applications began to run on the iPhone in a so-called “sandbox” The programs only have access to a certain number of system folders and data. Applications cannot control most elements of the smartphone, and they undergo strict moderation before getting into the Apple store.
After jailbreaking, this restriction is removed, applications can harm the operating system or gain access to user data. However, there have been no mass cases of account or password theft on jailbroken devices during its entire existence.
You need to take the security of your confidential data seriously and use two-factor authentication. These measures are enough to not worry about your data after jailbreaking your iPhone.
The second common argument against jailbreaking is the stability and autonomy of iOS itself after jailbreaking. On the one hand, the availability of all sorts of tweaks for cleaning and optimizing the iPhone allows you to disable unnecessary processes and extend the battery life of the gadget, but on the other hand, in the wrong hands, such tools can harm the device.
In pursuit of free space on the smartphone or an extra hour of battery life, the user can delete something necessary for iOS to work. So, a jailbroken iPhone can be turned into a “brick”.
This happens extremely rarely, and the all-powerful DFU mode allows you to restore the gadget in the vast majority of cases.
Types of jailbreak
Globally, iOS jailbreak is divided into three types.Tethered jailbreak hacks a smartphone or tablet before it reboots. In this case, the gadget will no longer be able to boot normally without outside help. It will have to be connected to a computer and loaded using a hacking utility.
This type of jailbreak was very common 5-6 years ago, it used the bootrom vulnerabilities on Apple A4 processors and earlier versions. Of course, such a hack is very inconvenient, because the gadget must be connected to the computer after switching off or completely discharged battery.
Untethered jailbreak allows you to jailbreak your device with the ability to reboot it. To remove this jailbreak, you only need to restore the iPhone firmware.
This type of hacking is the most convenient, but vulnerabilities of this kind have not appeared for a very long time.
Semi- Tethered jailbreak hacks the device until the first reboot. After that, the iPhone or iPad starts in normal mode without tweaks and third-party applications. To jailbreak again, you need to connect the gadget to a computer or run a special jailbreak application on the device itself.
This type of jailbreak has become very common in the last few years. Due to the lack of serious vulnerabilities in iOS, jailbreak developers cannot implement untethered hacking.
More and more often, re-hacking in semi-tethered mode can be done using an iOS app, which allows you to use the gadget without any restrictions.
How iPhone Jailbreak Came to Be
Almost immediately after the first iPhone model went on sale back in 2007, users began complaining about the lack of many of the features they needed. The first-generation iPhone was significantly inferior to the then-popular communicators (as smartphones were previously called) running Windows Mobile and Symbian.
On July 10, 2007, just 11 days after the first iPhone went on sale, a group of developers demonstrated a hack of the iPhone OS mobile system. Many consider this date to be the birthday of jailbreak.
A group of hackers from the iPhone Dev Team demonstrated the ability to change wallpaper and ringtones on an iPhone. Before this, the Apple gadget displayed a black background under the icons and played the standard Marimba melody. A little later, jailbroken devices became able to send MMS.
Already on August 4th of the same year, the first third-party application for the iPhone appeared. It was a rather primitive game called Zune 2.
In November 2007, iPhone OS 1.1.2 was released. This update was the first to close jailbreak vulnerabilities. From that moment on, the confrontation between Apple programmers and hackers began, which continues to this day.
iPhone OS 1 – iPhone OS 3: The emergence of Cydia and the development of jailbreaking
By the end of 2007, several utilities for jailbreaking iPhone OS 1 appeared: AppTapp Installer, 4039 jailbreak, ZiPhone, iBrickr and JailbreakMe.Some applications only allowed you to add a few third-party ringtones, others could set wallpaper on your desktop, and still others opened access to the gadget's file system from your computer.
The hacking procedure was extremely simple. It was enough to open a certain site in the browser and click on the desired button. The hacking took place automatically in a few minutes.
At the same time, third-party installer programs appeared. The most popular at that time were Installer and Icy managers. With their help, you could download third-party programs and games to your iPhone.
An important milestone in the history of jailbreaking was March 2008. That's when Jay Freeman (better known by his nickname saurik ) released the third-party package manager Cydia. The program owes its name to the codling moth cydia pomonella, whose larvae are often found in apples of various varieties.
The utility allowed you to connect third-party repositories from which you could install tweaks and applications on a jailbroken iPhone.
Initially, Cydia was inferior in capabilities to its competitors Installer and Icy, but after six months, everything changed. Saurik did a huge amount of work to make his application the most functional alternative store on the iPhone.
So in March 2009, tweak developers were able to sell their extensions through Cydia. Purchases were linked to the buyer's account for further downloading on other gadgets, and payment was made through PayPal or Amazon Payments.
The popularity of the application was so high that by the end of 2009, every tenth iPhone owner installed Cydia.
The iPhone OS 2 operating system, which was introduced with the iPhone 3G, lasted only two days. After that, the developers released a utility for jailbreaking it.
You could hack an iPhone using the QuickPwn utility. At that time, popular tweaks were add-ons that added automatic focusing and video recording to the standard camera.
And Cydia add-on developers tried to “invent” multitasking. There were several add-ons that allowed you to keep apps in the background, rather than launching them from scratch every time you tapped an icon.
The iPhone OS 3 mobile system had fewer vulnerabilities and was more secure than its predecessor. For the first time, users had to wait several months after the system was released before they could hack it.
But already in the summer of 2009, there were several utilities for jailbreaking, such as blackra1n, Spirit and limera1n. The most stable and popular program for hacking at that time was redsn0w.
Why jailbreak: In those years, users upgraded iOS and added features that made the phone smart. Many ideas were then borrowed from Nokia smartphones, HTC gadgets and other devices on Windows Mobile.
This is how the first analogues of the control panel with system switches (the SBSettings tweak), battery charge percentage, video recording and other features appeared on the jailbroken iPhone.
Almost all iPhone models on the secondary market were sold with jailbreak. It allowed to untie the smartphone from the operator and use it with another SIM card or in another country. Later, such a loophole was closed and the so-called “unlocking” by software became impossible.
Another popular direction of jailbreak was piracy. The Installous store, which existed in those years, allowed downloading paid games for free and downloading third-party applications that had not passed the moderation in the App Store.
It wasn't so much the users' greed that was the issue, but the difficulty of making purchases in the App Store. The prices of many paid games at that time were small, but the purchase turned into a real quest.
I remember how I had to create an American Apple ID account, open a PayPal account, link a virtual QIWI card to it and top it up via a terminal. And only after that could I press the coveted “Buy” button in the Apple app store.
iOS 4 – iOS 5: Hassle-Free Jailbreak
Between 2009 and 2011, Apple paid little attention to the jailbreak community. Jobs and the company had enough of their own problems to not have key employees distracted by countering hacking.First, there were problems with the iPhone 4, which came out with the new iOS 4. Everyone remembers the famous "antennagate", Jobs' apology and the appearance of silicone bumpers.
The company began actively developing the iPad. After the controversial first generation, it was necessary to seriously refine and improve the iPad 2.
Over the next couple of years, Apple programmers only closed the holes in the system that developers found, which allowed jailbreaking. Utilities for hacking new versions of the mobile operating system appeared 1-2 weeks after the release of the next update.
Several independent development teams released jailbreak apps at once, the most popular being sn0wbreeze, JailbreakMe, limera1n and redsn0w. After the release of iOS 5, the famous Absinthe utility appeared.
Why jailbreak was done: hacking was still used for piracy, you could download almost any paid game or program for free.
After several years of using iOS, users got tired of the standard icons and system menus. Against the backdrop of Android seething with colors and paints, many wanted a little customization. So, icons “that you wanted to lick” and skeuomorphism (the name of the style in which old versions of iOS were designed) were replaced with ridiculous design themes from Cydia. The Winterboard tweak gained popularity.
On the iPhone, they installed Android-style graphic unlock codes, experimented with widgets in the notification center and the multitasking bar. You remember the strip of icons at the bottom of the screen?
Even back then, developers added an analogue of the modern “do not disturb” mode, useful gestures for managing the system, and removed all sorts of restrictions, such as the limit on downloading applications over 3G. All this only appeared in iOS over time.
iOS 6 – iOS 8: The Golden Era of Jailbreak
The real battles on the jailbreak battlefield began to unfold in 2012. The Cupertino company noticed the growing popularity of hacking and the associated piracy, which deprived the company and developers of part of their income.A whole group of Apple programmers were sent to strengthen the security of iOS and to quickly release updates after the appearance of jailbreak utilities.
On the other side of the barricades, three main groups of hackers worked on jailbreaking iOS 6. They released utilities redsn0w, evasi0n and p0sixspwn in turn. They “fought” not only with Apple, but also among themselves.
The jailbreak community would regularly see information about a new vulnerability that would allow jailbreaking, after which an information war would begin between hackers. Some would claim that the jailbreak would be released in a few weeks, others would cry and complain about the impossibility of jailbreaking, and still others would call for this vulnerability to be left for jailbreaking the next version of iOS.
On the one hand, such wars and competition forced developers to actively work on hacking, but on the other hand, during these years, competing groups used most of the known vulnerabilities, which could put an end to jailbreaking in the future.
Many iPhone owners literally followed the developers' official pages on social networks every day, they reported on the percentage of readiness of utilities and named approximate dates for their release. At the same time, there were so-called defectors who "leaked" vulnerabilities in iOS to Apple representatives for a reward, after which the hacking progress was reset and everything started from the very beginning.
Users first received a utility for a tethered jailbreak, and after a few weeks they had to jailbreak again to make it untethered. All this was accompanied by glitches in standard applications, non-operability of programs, and other minor bugs.
Hackers sometimes called for stopping at a certain version of iOS in order to be able to jailbreak in the future, and sometimes they suddenly pushed everyone to update before the next release, which closed the vulnerabilities found.
The iOS 7 mobile operating system, along with the transition to a new flat design, was seriously updated in terms of architecture and security. All known vulnerabilities and hacking holes were eliminated at that time.
Of the three teams working on the iOS 6 jailbreak, only one remained, the hackers constantly complained about the lack of time and the complexity of the hack. The first working jailbreak utility had to be waited for several months, and a week after its release, the key iOS 7.1 update was released, closing the hack.
Hackers who had a hard time cracking the previous jailbreak practically gave up on their work and began to declare the impossibility of hacking the new version of iOS. However, the Chinese entered the arena.
Without further ado, whining on Twitter, or universal suffering, the developers from the Celestial Empire released the Pangu utility. The Cupertino team covered up the holes they found with several system releases, but the Chinese updated their jailbreak tool over and over again.
A special feature of the Chinese utility is its built-in store of hacked applications.
Only the Chinese worked on jailbreaking iOS 8. European and American hackers lost interest in hacking or simply could not keep up with their Asian colleagues.
Jailbreak fans have been changing utilities for hacking their devices for a year. At first, the Pangu8 program was on the wave of popularity, and then it was replaced by the TaiG utility. Periodically, the PP Jailbreak program took the lead.
All programs were developed by independent groups of Chinese hackers, each of which had serious financial motivation. The thing is that simultaneously with the jailbreak, a Chinese analogue of the App Store was installed with hacked applications and a bunch of local advertising. This brought in big profits in China, which allowed stimulating the jailbreak community.
These years are considered to be the golden era of jailbreaking. On the one hand, there is a constant confrontation between Apple developers and hackers, on the other hand, there is competition between different hacking developers, and on the third hand, there is a thirst for money, betrayal and leaks of vulnerabilities by individuals.
Watching jailbreaking was really interesting back then. That's why I started my YouTube channel, sharing the most interesting tweaks, hacking methods, and other iPhone-related tricks.
Tweak developers also did not stand still and released many interesting solutions that in one form or another made it into iOS.
Why jailbreak was done: hacking during this period allowed you to seriously upgrade your iPhone or iPad. This is how Pull to Refresh gestures appeared in most applications, the convenient SwipeBack gesture, which is now indispensable in iOS, the picture-in-picture mode, which completely copied the VideoPane tweak. Even the tiled multitasking mode in iOS 7 was previously found in tweaks from Cydia.
At the junction of iOS 6 and iOS 7, some users wanted to get the flat mode from the new “seven” on an old jailbroken device, and already updated users missed skeuomorphism and installed tweaks to return the old graphics.
Jailbreak was definitely something Apple paid attention to, as many of the new features of each iOS have already been available in one form or another as extensions from Cydia.
iOS 9 – iOS 11: Stagnation in the Jailbreak World
With the release of iOS 9, Apple decided to deal a decisive blow to the jailbreak community. This concerned both powerful protection with a minimum of vulnerabilities for hacking, and the transfer of a large number of features from the jailbreak world to iOS.Thus, in iOS on iPad, the "picture in picture" mode appeared, which could previously be activated using the VideoPane tweak. Launching two applications on one screen was repeated by the ReachApp tweak.
The analogue of the SearchSettings tweak is the search bar inside the Settings app. From the AUXO and Dash extensions, the Cupertino company transferred the appearance of multitasking to the iPhone.
The BattSaver tweak replaced the iPhone's default power-saving mode. The SwipeSelection tweak, which had existed for several years and allowed you to move the virtual cursor by swiping on the keyboard, was replaced by the standard, modernized iOS keyboard.
The Quick Reply extension was used to quickly respond to messages in notification banners, and the RelevApps tweak, which added icons for launching applications to the control center, was replaced by an updated bottom curtain.
Many tweak developers were left without work, the functionality of their extensions appeared in iOS out of the box.
It was during this period that Cydia creator Saurik himself repeatedly spoke about losing interest in hacking. He spent a long time updating his tweak store, leaving jailbreak fans without a convenient way to install extensions.
Creators of tweaks that didn't make it into iOS turned from garage enthusiasts into commercial developers. More and more extensions started to receive protection from hacking, special means for license control and paid updates. It was no longer enough to throw a couple of dollars on coffee for the creators of a cool extension; it was necessary to buy a new version of the tweak every year after key iOS updates.
As a result, jailbreak utilities were released for a long time, after which you had to wait for several weeks for Cydia to be adapted and your favorite tweaks to be finalized. You had to pay for large extensions, and there were fewer and fewer small and useful ones.
Of the Chinese developers, only the Pangu team continued their work, new utilities for jailbreaking Phœnix and Home Depot appeared, and the once popular hacking tool JailbreakMe was resurrected.
The final stagnation began after the release of iOS 10. Almost all well-known and experienced developers left the world of jailbreaking, interest in the topic of hacking was falling every day, and users increasingly switched to the “light side”.
At the same time, iOS had enough holes and vulnerabilities for new developers to release utilities for hacking. During the relevance of iOS 10, there were 7 utilities for jailbreaking: h3lix, Yalu, Meridian, TotallyNotSpyware, doubleh3lix, Saïgon and g0blin.
Jailbreaking iOS 11 proceeded in the same leisurely manner. In the fall, LiberiOS and Electra utilities were used for jailbreaking, and at the beginning of 2018, a new program unc0ver appeared.
During these years, developers simply could not keep up with Apple programmers and released jailbreaks with a big delay. Often, it was necessary to skip official releases and sit on the old version of iOS waiting for a new hacking utility.
Why jailbreak: Users were still waiting for a dark interface theme and used Cydia tweaks to activate it, transferred some features from the Android world and added minor improvements to standard iOS applications, for example, running the WhatsApp messenger on the iPad.
A large segment was occupied by owners of old iPhones and iPads. Apple decided not to add new software features like different multitasking modes on the iPad or advanced shooting modes on the iPhone. All of this was easily enabled and worked on old gadgets with jailbreak.
iOS 12 – iOS 13: the end of the jailbreak era
It has become increasingly difficult for developers to find motivation to hack Apple's mobile operating system. There were enough holes in iOS 12 for several more jailbreaks, but it was only a few months before iOS 13 was released that a decent utility for trouble-free hacking was put together.After installing the jailbreak, I had to sadly admit that many useful tweaks turned out to be inoperative due to the latest updates under the hood of iOS.
The chances of seeing old favorite extensions were getting smaller and smaller. It was very difficult to find something really useful in Cydia.
Tweaks either copied not the best solutions from the Android world, or added features of dubious usefulness.
With the release of iOS 13 and iPadOS, the Cupertino company has hammered the final nail into the jailbreak coffin. Apple gadgets learned to work with a mouse and trackpad out of the box, a dark interface theme appeared, the camera and built-in photo editor were pumped up, swipe input on the keyboard was added (Russian is still out of the question), and CarPlay capabilities were expanded. The browser, mailer, and notifications on the locked screen were seriously updated.
The most interesting thing is that many of the features were not taken from the jailbreak world, but were developed 100% by Apple. This proves that the resource of third-party developers for upgrading iOS is exhausted.
Why jailbreak was done: hacking the latest versions of iOS is still relevant for some users. So, the iPhone did not add call recording, did not allow the launch of any applications in CarPlay mode, did not implement the guest mode and convenient Safari features on the smartphone.
Here is a list of all the good reasons why you should jailbreak iOS 13.
Personally, I feel most offended by the dialer that has stopped developing. With the jailbreak tweak KuaiDial, which has existed for almost 10 years, you can add a lot of useful and interesting things to the standard iPhone application.
Many of the presented possibilities have not yet been implemented by the Cupertino company.
Jailbreak on other platforms
In addition to iOS hacking, other Apple mobile operating systems are also subject to jailbreak. We will not talk about iPadOS, because at the moment it is almost a complete copy of the iPhone system with the addition of several features.Jailbreak can be done on tvOS and watchOS operating systems for TV set-top boxes and smart watches, respectively.
For a long time, the system for Apple TV boxes did not have the necessary protection, and updates were not released as quickly as for the iPhone. Almost every version of the software was subject to hacking, and there were 5-6 relevant utilities from different developers for jailbreaking.
The first-generation Apple TV didn't require jailbreaking at all. The device was practically a full-fledged low-power computer (with a Pentium M processor and an Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics card ), on which you could easily install Linux, an Ubuntu build (Crystalbuntu), or XBMC.
Starting with the second generation of consoles, developers switched to Apple A4 (ARM Cortex-A8) processors and a closed modified iOS build. Then enthusiasts started working on its jailbreak.
There were many programs and methods for jailbreaking the second and third generation Apple TV models. Utilities greenpois0n, Limera1n, PwnageTool, Redsn0w, Seas0nPass, Sn0wbreeze and unthredeh4il allowed jailbreaking set-top boxes running Apple TV 4.
The Apple TV 5 operating system could be jailbroken using the programs Evasi0n, P0sixspwn, Redsn0w, Seas0nPass and unthredeh4il.
During the time of Apple TV 6, only one jailbreak utility appeared – Seas0nPass, and after the release of Apple TV 7, the developers abandoned the platform and switched to the new tvOS 9, which was installed on the fourth generation of Apple set-top boxes.
Jailbreaking Apple TV 2 and 3 was necessary to expand the capabilities of the set-top box. At that time, the operating system did not support third-party applications and had a minimum of settings. After jailbreaking, it was possible to connect the set-top box to popular streaming services, set up IPTV, view content from network storage or computers via Wi-Fi.
The first versions of the new tvOS were hacked using the then popular Pangu utility, or more precisely, its modification for Apple TV Pangu9. The vulnerabilities were quickly closed with updates and jailbreaking of set-top boxes was blocked for almost a year.
With the advent of tvOS 10, a new hacking tool appeared – LiberTV, and six months later, two independent groups of developers released the utilities backr00m and greeng0blin.
The latest generation of the Apple TV 4K set-top box was launched simultaneously with the release of tvOS 11. Three programs for its jailbreak were released almost simultaneously: LiberTV, backr00m and electraTV.
Almost all versions of tvOS 12, with the exception of the latest patching update, could be hacked using the ChimeraTV utility, and hackers have not yet hacked the most current tvOS 13.
With the advent of third-party applications for Apple TV 4/4K, jailbreaking makes almost no sense. After hacking, the user will have full access to the gadget's file system and the ability to control the set-top box via the SSH protocol. If desired, you can sign ready-made applications that have not passed censorship in the App Store and install them on your set-top box.
In fact, there are no really necessary third-party applications. There is some kind of browser for TV, several omnivorous players and games that for some reason the moderators did not like.
As for Apple Watch, the interest of jailbreak developers is even lower here. Methods of hacking and so-called exploits exist, but hacking smart watches does not provide any serious advantages.
During the times of watchOS 1-2, there were not even public utilities for jailbreaking. Almost immediately after the release of watchOS 3 in 2016, the OverCl0ck utility appeared. With its help, it was possible to hack the watch operating system up to watchOS 3.2.3.
With the release of watchOS 4, another group of developers presented their utility jelbrekTime. The vulnerability used for jailbreaking was closed with the update iOS 4.1.
There are still no public utilities for jailbreaking watchOS 5-6.
Similar hacking procedures exist in the world of Android, Windows Phone, Symbian and other mobile OS. Hackers regularly hack operating systems for XBOX and PlayStation gaming consoles, and there is also an analogue of jailbreak for Kindle e-readers.
Any operating system with limitations will sooner or later get its jailbreak, but that's a topic for another article.
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