Tag Archives: jailbreak

Hack replaces normal iOS notifications with Facebook “Chat Heads”

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On a jailbroken iPhone, Chat Heads can be anywhere.

A developer has created a hack that allows the new Chat Heads feature in the iOS Facebook app to appear across all apps, according to a report Thursday from The Verge. Adam Bell’s tweak for jailbroken iPhones lets Chat Head notifications appear across the operating system, as they do for Android phones with the new Facebook Home installed.

Chat Heads are part of the Facebook Home environment, released for Android last week and announced at the beginning of April. Chat Heads pop up on a Facebook Home-enabled phone as notifications for Facebook messages or SMSes in lieu of the typical Android notification, and users can tap on them to directly access the message, drag them around to rearrange them, or dismiss them.

The latest version of Facebook for iOS includes Chat Head alerts, but only for Facebook messages, and only while the Facebook app is open. Bell’s tweak for a jailbroken iOS device essentially involves making the rest of the Facebook app transparent while it continues to run so that only the Chat Heads layer is visible across the phone.

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Apple will give popular jailbreak tool the banhammer with next iOS update

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Apple’s next minor point iOS update will fix the exploits that allow iPhones to be jailbroken with a very popular tool, according to a report from MacRumors. The 6.1.3 update, which was seeded to developers as a beta one week ago, will break the functionality of the jailbreaking tool known as “evasi0n,” meaning its creators will have to find a new way around or through the OS.

6.1.3 will already be an important security update, as it purports to fix a zombie passcode bypass bug that cropped up in iOS 6.1. When 6.1.3 is pushed out, phones with that version installed will be unable to use the evasi0n jailbreak, which had relieved almost 7 million phones of Apple’s pesky walled-garden strictures since early February in only three weeks of availability.

While that’s a lot of reach for a jailbreak in such a short time, three weeks is actually a long time for Apple to leave a jailbreak exploit open: MacRumors points out that Apple shut down Jailbreakme 3.0 for the iPhone 4 after only nine days.

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Latest iOS jailbreak: Nearly 7 million served

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The latest iOS jailbreak that works on devices running iOS 6.x has been used to crack almost 7 million iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches, according to Cydia admin Jay Freeman. Freeman’s comments were published by Forbes on Friday morning, highlighting the continued popularity of jailbreaking among certain segments of the iOS-using community.

The latest jailbreak tool, called “evasi0n,” was released on Monday of this week—the first iOS jailbreak to be released in quite some time. Freeman says it took 136 days to crack iOS 6.1, compared to the previous jailbreak taking 98 days, and the one before that taking 38 days. “That’s what made this such a landmark jailbreak,” Freeman told Forbes. “It had been so long and we were all so hungry for it.”

Unlike some of the others, the evasi0n jailbreak is untethered. The tool works by exploiting an undocumented flaw within iOS 6, and although the first beta of iOS 6.1.1 was released to developers after the jailbreak was published, the update has yet to fix the flaw that makes the jailbreak possible.

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New untethered jailbreak works for iDevices running iOS 6.x

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An iOS hacking team that calls itself “evad3rs” has released a tool to jailbreak devices running iOS 6. The tool, called “evasi0n,” is available for OS X, Windows, and Linux. It can jailbreak iOS 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, and 6.1 on all compatible iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches.

For those unfamiliar with jailbreaking, it’s a process that defeats the built-in security and DRM features of iOS, allowing greater flexibility in customization, the ability to install apps outside of the official App Store, and access to iOS’s underlying UNIX internals. Jailbreakers tend to use the technique to enable functionality that isn’t part of iOS, or to customize the look of icons and other elements. Some also use it to unlock devices from particular carriers or to install software otherwise barred (and sometimes pirated) from the App Store.

Jailbreaking tools typically rely on some undocumented flaw that enables working around iOS’s security measures. As such, each new version of iOS usually patches flaws once they are exploited by jailbreaking tools, so each version of iOS often requires a new jailbreak tool. evasi0n uses a previously undisclosed exploit that works on all available versions of iOS 6. It also works “untethered,” meaning the iOS device doesn’t need to be plugged into a computer to re-enable the jailbreak every time the device is rebooted.

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Mac OS Spotted “Running” On A Jailbroken Microsoft Surface RT

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Well that didn’t take long. Here’s Mac OS running (well, it’s emulated) on a Microsoft Surface. Blasphemy? Awesome? Hard to say. Now that a jailbreak tool for Microsoft’s Windows Surface RT is out in the wild, allowing users to install unsigned ARM desktop applications on these otherwise oddball devices, hackers are having a field day figuring out what apps they can get to work. The latest and greatest of these efforts? Developer Steve Troughton-Smith shows off his Microsoft Surface RT running an old build of Mac OS.

Don’t get too excited, though. The Surface is running Rhapsody, an experimental OS build that Apple demonstrated back in 1997, Geek.com reports. Troughton-Smith is using Bochs, a free, open source virtualization app to make this (magic/horror, depending on your perspective) happen.

In order for apps to run on a jailbroken Microsoft Surface RT computer, users must first run the Windows RT jailbreak tool, which takes advantage of an exploit discovered by C.L. Rokr (@clrokr). The automated tool for jailbreaking the Surface was posted on the XDA Developers forums, which also provide the installation instructions and a FAQ. The tool essentially automates the jailbreak for you, so it’s not as complex as perhaps hacking into an Android phone can be.

Like “tethered” jailbreaks on iOS devices, however, this jailbreak also has to be run each time the Surface boots – it’s not permanent. Microsoft may or may not choose to release a security patch that closes the hole in the future, the company told reporters earlier this week.

Already, a number of apps have been recompiled to run on the Surface, including TightVNC, Notepad++, IP Messenger, a Nintendo game emulator called CrystalBoy, and others. Bochs, an x86 emulator, was also one of the first on this early list.

Verizon ships its iPhone 5 unlocked

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Reports are surfacing that iPhone 5s purchased from Verizon are arriving unlocked usable on any GSM cell network. Jeff Benjamin at iDownloadBlog notes that he was able to insert a cut-to-size AT&T SIM into his new Verizon iPhone 5 and connect to AT&T’s HSPA+ cellular network, without having to pester Verizon for permission. When contacted about the matter, Verizon confirmed to him that the device was indeed fully unlocked.

This is a tremendous boon to US customers, who have in the past had to argue long and hard for the privilege of detaching their iPhones from their primary carrier’s network. Just earlier this month, we reported on AT&T’s grudging agreement to unlock some devices to allow their use with other GSM networks. Verizon’s unlocked-out-of-the-box stance frees their customers from having to essentially ask permission from their carrier (or resort to complex jailbreaking plus unlocking shenanigans) to use their devices abroad, or to take their devices to another carrier when their contract time is up.

Coupled with the AT&T iPhone 5′s limited LTE frequency range, this is yet another reason to recommend new prospective buyers look at picking up an iPhone from Verizon instead of AT&T—if you don’t like the Verizon service, you can always pop in an AT&T SIM and switch back to the other carrier. So far, the only downside we can see to using a Verizon-sourced iPhone 5 is the lack of simultaneous voice and data (though Verizon does helpfully point out that you can use voice and data at the same time, provided that data comes in over WiFi).

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Nearly 1 million iOS jailbreaks over Memorial Day thanks to Absinthe

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The developers behind the iPhone Dev Team and Chronic Dev, among others, released a new version of their iOS jailbreak tool, Absinthe, last Friday. But is jailbreaking iOS devices still en vogue? It certainly seems like it: the latest version, which performs an untethered jailbreak of nearly all iOS devices running iOS 5.1.1—including the iPad 3—was reportedly used to jailbreak at least 973,086 devices over the Memorial Day weekend.

Jailbreaking skirts around the built-in security features of iOS, allowing users to install third-party software not approved by Apple, customize the user interface, and even access an iOS device’s command line and file system. It can also enable unlocking a (GSM) device from a particular carrier for use on an alternate carrier, or using SIMs from local carriers when traveling abroad.

Jailbreaking can sometimes be a difficult process because developers must often find security holes that allow the jailbreaks in the first place. Apple constantly works to plug those security holes, and many times, new versions of iOS or devices with newer processors are difficult to crack. They may also require “tethering” to a computer with jailbreak software running in order to reboot.

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iPhone 4S and iPad 2 Finally Get Proper, Untethered Jailbreaks

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While the once long list of legitimate reasons to jailbreak your iPhone has taken a hit with each new iOS release, that burning desire to “Free your device” and/or “Fight the power” and/or “Just do crazy stuff that other people can’t do” never really goes away.

3 months after the release of the iPhone 4S and 10 months after the release of the iPad 2, the ridiculously talented iOS hacking community has finally cracked the ultimate challenge for both devices: the untethered jailbreak.

I know these things can get a bit jargony, so a quick recap: to “jailbreak” means to modify a device to run code and applications not signed or approved by Apple, thereby allowing you to do things with your device far outside of what would normally be possible. “Untethered” means that once it’s jailbroken, it stays jailbroken (whereas a “tethered” jailbreak means the device resets to its normal, un-jailbroken state whenever it is reset)

The team behind this hack, Chronic Dev, is the same group that makes the greenpois0n tool that’s been jailbreaking iOS devices for years. Remember comex, the iOS hacker who went legit with an internship at Apple? He was a key member of this group.

While their server seems to be taking a bit of a pounding right now, you can find the new iPhone 4s/iPad 2 jailbreaking tool (dubbed “Greenpos0n Absinthe”) right over here.