I usually leave it up to Sebastien to provide our loyal readers with the jailbreak information but I’ll take the reigns this time. PMP Today has posted a couple of alternative sites for those wishing to jailbreak their iPhone after individuals claimed they were having difficulties performing the hack with JailbreakMe.
If you’re among those experiencing troubles with the self titled URL, it is recommended that you try using jailbreakme.com/index.html or accessing the Canadian site of jailbreakme.ca to perform the process. If none of those work for you, you can always try what iDB reader Joe suggested by visiting jailbreakme.com/blob.html from your iPhone. Read More
With evey major hardware release it isn’t long before the community gets their hands dirty with it and cracks whatever security measures the manufacturers set forth. For some devices such as mobile phones, the cracking happens much quicker seeing how it’s a matter of software. However, with video game consoles it usually takes a bit longer for hackers to undo the workings done by their respective hardware manufacutrers.
Today, a group of hackers known as Team Xecuter is proud to announce that they have cracked the security measures on the new Xbox 360 allowing the video game console to play ‘backup discs’. Of course, if/when this actually makes its way to public, the only thing it’s going to be used for is most likely playing pirated games.
So, if you’re willing to do such a thing when the crack is made public, you’re going to have to realize that you will be breaking the law so you better be careful. Then again, it could all just be an elaborate hoax but you can decide for yourself based on the above video.
Remember that nasty PDF bug that allowed potentially malicious code to be executed on your iOS device? Right, the one that Apple recently patched with the iOS 4.0.2 software update, slamming the door on jailbreakme.com. Well, if you own the original iPhone or iPod touch you’re still at risk since Apple’s update isn’t compatible with those devices. Hell, many iPhone 3G owners are also at risk after rolling back their handsets to iOS 3.1.3 due to sluggish (to put it mildly) performance running iOS 4. So what can you do to protect yourselves? Jailbreak. As counterintuitive as that sounds, Jay Freeman (aka @saurik) just released a patch onto Cydia (search for “PDF Patch”) for all iOS devices, no need to update to 4.0.2. Of course, jailbreaking presents its own set of risks, so be careful — and for crissake be sure to change the root password if you install SSH.
JailbreakMe brought root to the iPhone 4-wielding masses, but also unearthed a nasty exploit in a PDF font. Thankfully for the rooted and those who never intended to root, Cupertino claims it has already patched the hole. “We’re aware of the reported issue, we have already developed a fix and it will be available to customers in an upcoming software update,” an Apple spokeswoman told CNET. We’re not sure exactly when it will arrive, but we’d lay odds on soon — in the meantime, don’t open any PDFs you don’t trust, don’t do anything illegal or immoral, and hit up Comex’s hack ASAP if your heart’s still set on that shiny new unlock.
As with any jailbreak or rooting of a handset, “hacking” a phone OS is usually exactly that: exploiting a weakness to get unsigned code onto a device. That means that any other hacker, be they sufficiently nefarious, could use that same exploit to mess with your phone in the bad, not-installing-emulators-off-of-Cydia sense. Early iPhone jailbreaks (back when installing your own ringtones was a wild idea) took advantage of a TIFF exploit, the recent EVO 4G root found a hole in Flash Lite, and the JailbreakMe exploit is stuffing its code in a PDF font. Until Apple patches this exploit (when asked, Apple told us it was “aware of the reports and looking into them”) we’d be extra careful about which PDFs we open — there aren’t any reports of malicious use so far, but with Safari’s seamless handling of PDFs, it wouldn’t be hard for some hacker to hide a potentially phone-invading PDF behind some harmless looking hyperlink. The iPhone devteam points out that this isn’t the only known exploit for Safari on iOS, so there’s no need to start hyperventilating about this particular one… unless it’s a slow day at your mainstream media publication and you’re looking for something to hyperventilate about.
Oh, and are you looking for a surefire way to steer clear of PDFs? Cydia has a PDF loading warner that lets you skip PDFs your browser is trying to load on a case by case basis. Of course, you’ll need to jailbreak your phone to use it. Ironic, right?
I usually leave it up to Sebastien to provide our loyal readers with the jailbreak information but I’ll take the reigns this time. PMP Today has posted a couple of alternative sites for those wishing to jailbreak their iPhone after individuals claimed they were having difficulties performing the hack with JailbreakMe.
Comments