Monday, December 23, 2013

iOS 7 Jailbreak - The Full Story

Hey guys,

First, I would like to wish everyone happy holidays and I hope your time off will be splendid! During this time of year, people are relaxing and celebrating with family and friends, wishing for the new year to bring them happiness and easiness. Sadly, the evad3rs team is having the exact opposite feeling.

Yesterday, at around 4-6 in the morning, the evad3rs team released an iOS 7 jailbreak that would work for all devices running iOS 7 to iOS 7.1 Beta 2.  The initial reactions were joyful and the team even tweeted "Merry Christmas! The iOS 7 jailbreak has been released at evasi0n.com!" People were amazed and baffled by this news because no one expected them to come out with a jailbreak this early (some were predicting February like the last one).  After a short amount of time, people began to run into issues with the tweaks from Cydia.  iPhone 5s users couldn't even download anything because of their 64-Bit ARM architecture.  A key problem that was found was the MobileSubstrate was not updated for iOS 7 and there was huge commotion among developers not having this prepared.  Most notably, Jay Freeman (saurik), creator of Cydia, discussed his connection with this matter and what he's trying to do on Twitter.  Other developers were angry and outraged about not knowing the release date of this jailbreak, and some were threatening to leave this business for other Mobile Operating Systems (ex. Android, Windows Phone, etc).  Currently, the developers are working together to resolve this issue, but another pressing matter that has brought uproar for this jailbreak is the TaiG company.

The Evad3rs team are a lucrative group of hackers that put endless hours into their jailbreak for no true monetary gain. The donations are how they make some money, and even that goes to other important causes like EFF. Even with this being true, one must contemplate why they would rush this jailbreak.  The true answer deals with TaiG and Geohot.  TaiG approahced the evad3rs team about having their alternative app store encrypted in the jailbreak.  In doing so, a rumored (not yet confirmed) $1 million would be the given to the team for putting their store inside of the jailbreak.  This motivated them to work hard before anyone could take the credit for themselves.  In the mean time, Geohot was working on the jailbreak too and had most of the exploits in place for this jailbreak.  Evad3rs knew they had to release it quickly without anyone knowing (this is what caused developers to be frustrated with them).

The problem with TaiG is their pirated apps on their store.  People were quick to assume that Evad3rs should have known about this, but no one truly understands the situation at place, so one must continue to wait for the team to do an interview.  (They released a statement to the jailbreaking community about this here).

Understanding this sitaution is somewhat complex, but after reading and hearing about this all day yesterday, one must conclude that this does not detract the effort and time that these guys put in for the jailbreak.  The problem comes down to ethical matters, miscommunication, and politics.  I hope people will continue to applaud evad3rs for their effort and time.  The jailbreaking community might have a bleak future after yesterday, but one must be hopeful that more developers will arise from this stumble.

Thank you guys for reading this and I hope this made sense.  Tell me your thoughts in the comment section below and if I should possibly become an iOS jailbreak developer.  Happy Holidays!

Thanks,
Programmer84

UPDATE: I removed some of the concerns about TaiG since I did not have the full story.  I apologize for the misinformation and TaiG has been removed from the Jailbreak, so don't worry.