Score one to Apple. Leading iPhone jaibreak hackers the Dev Team have decided not to bother trying to make an exploit that will jailbreak iPhones running the 4.0.2 firmware, claiming that they don’t want to be drawn into a game of ‘cat and mouse’ with Apple.
Jailbreaking the iPhone may nave been given the legal nod over in the US, but that doesn’t mean that Apple has to take it lying down. Jailbreakers are in a constant arms race with Apple, as every firmware update could potentially close off another vulnerability that allows a jailbreak to take place and the hackers are forced to come up with more creative way s of wriggling around Apple’s security.
The recent 4.0.2 update to iOS4 (and the iOS3 update 3.2.2) has locked down the iPhone again and users who installed it report that it reverses any jailbreak performed on their phones. Normally the Dev Team – the coders responsible for the leading jailbreaking tools – would bounce back with an update of their own, but not this time.
In a statement on their blog, the Dev Team have announced that they will not be providing any further patches for the 4.0.x branch of the iPhone’s firmware, preferring instead to just work on a hack for version 4.1, which is currently in beta.
“With FW 4.1 still in its beta stages, it makes no sense to escalate the ‘cat & mouse’ with Apple for FW updates that only fix the jailbreak holes. To quote WOPR [the computer from WarGames], ‘the only winning move is not to play’.”
Out TBC | £free | iPhone Dev Team (via MCV)
