iOS 4.1 Out For Less Than A Day And Already Jailbroken

Apple has recently released iOS 4.1 and hackers are attempting to come up with a jailbreak

People have been waiting for iOS 4.1 to be released for a long time. The upgrade would finally solve some of the issues that many users have been facing, among which the proximity sensor fault and the nightmarishly slow iPhone 3G performance with iOS 4.0 onboard. While the aforementioned users rejoiced the moment when iOS 4.1 became available for download less than a day ago, people who owned jailbroken phones were warned that upgrading would mean the hack might not work properly anymore. As you may have guessed, some people are still considering whether to update or not.

For those who aren’t aware of what jailbreaking is, the process basically allows iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch owners to download and use various applications that aren’t available through the App store or Apple approved. The US government has recently proclaimed jailbreaking legal. Despite this, jailbraking a device will still void your warranty and Apple doesn’t in any way approve of the process. After Apple’s latest upgrade, jailbreaking the iOS became as easy as never before. People could actually jailbreak their iPhones by visiting a certain website and sliding their finger over the phone’s screen (in a gesture similar to that of unlocking a phone).

But as soon as Apple comes up with a new software version, hackers have to start all over again in uncovering new holes they can take advantage of. Despite all the fixes and new features iOS 4.1 might bring, most people believed that upgrading to the latest version of the operating system might mean that you’ll be stuck with Apple’s limitations and will be unable to jailbreak. Well, not necessarily. It looks like mere hours after Apple released the update, hackers were already working on finding some vulnerability which would allow the devices to be jailbroken. According to The Register, the exploit in the boot ROM of iOS devices was announced by iPhone Dev-Team member pod2g. Other hackers soon confirmed it and also mentioned that because the exploit targets a low-level part of the OS, Apple would actually have to make significant hardware changes to stop jailbreakers. Updating the software won’t do the trick anymore.

So is it finally game over for Apple? Will Jobs finally learn to accept jailbreaking? After all, the process is now legal. Apple’s ex-Mac Guy, Justin Long even showed up on TV with a jailbroken iPhone. It’s becoming impossible to stop jailbreaking from happening. A previous jailbreak which was known as the  24kpwn exploit was actually ‘fixed’ by adding the vulnerable boot ROM. It looks like all of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices that shipped since November all contain this component.

For the time being Dev-Team members have mentioned that there’s still work to be done in order to fine-tune the exploit technique. Users are still better off avoiding the update to 4.1 for now. But I’m willing to bet that the exploit will soon be widely available, and we’ll let you know as soon as that happens.