It is just a matter of time before someone breaks the improved security in new mobile OS releases, and Georgia Tech researchers have now found a way to jailbreak the current version of iOS.
Georgia Tech Information Security Center has a long track record of jail breaking iOS, giving them a leading edge on every new release. Each time a new patch is introduced, a new way to circumvent it is found. This time the researchers used a multi-step attack after analysing the new patches, working out a sequence that would jailbreak any modern iPhone.
The team of researchers, Yeongjin Jang, Byoungyoung Lee, Tielei Wang and Billy Lau, stresses the importance of patching all of the threats and not just to close one vulnerability and assume that it renders others unusable as attack method.
“Patching all vulnerabilities for a modern, complex software system (i.e., Windows, iOS) is often difficult due to the volume of bugs and response time requirements. Instead, software vendors usually devise quick workarounds to mitigate the exploitation of a given vulnerability. However, those patches are sometimes incomplete, and attackers can utilize different attack vectors to re-exploit a patched vulnerability. iOS is no exception.”
As so many recent vulnerability discoveries, the findings will be presented at the upcoming Black Hat convention in Las Vegas. Weirdly enough, no one has yet claimed the $30.000 Device Freedom Prize for an open source iOS7 jailbreak.
It is highly unlikely that this jailbreak will remain operational for very long, as Apple certainly will try to patch it, iOS 8 is in beta and iPhone 6 is rumoured for an October launch.
Thank you I programmer for providing us with this information
Images courtesy of Apple
