Apple and Pangu, the popular Chinese jailbreak development team, are now playing the cat-and-mouse game with regards to the Apple iOS 8.4.1 Jailbreak and the upcoming Apple iOS 9.
Just when jailbreakers thought that they have seen the last of the Apple iOS before the iOS 9 when the American tech giant rolled out the iOS 8.4 firmware update on June 30, they got surprised when the company seeded the beta version of the iOS 8.4.1 in mid-July.
The jailbreakers were obviously worried of releasing the jailbreak tweaks and other apps for iOS 8.4 because once Apple officially releases the subsequent iOS 8.4.1 firmware update, some, if not most of their jailbreak tweaks and apps will no longer work on the iOS devices. Subsequently, Apple officially released the iOS 8.4.1 on August 13.
That has been the game of Apple with jailbreak developers. The company has been trying to outsmart the jailbreakers and make them second-guess Apple’s next moves as far as its iOS is concerned.
Apple claims that its latest iOS 9 would be very difficult to jailbreak, but that remains to be seen as no iOS have not been jailbroken at all.
Chinese jailbreak developer TaiG has actually jailbroken the Apple iOS 8.4 just days after the American tech giant released it on June 30 but when the company officially released the Apple iOS 8.4.1 more than a month and a half later, it patched the TaiG jailbreak exploits on Apple iOS 8.4, leaving them unusable once users update to iOS 8.4.1.
Apple has made creating an iOS 8.4.1 jailbreak nearly impossible. The latest firmware update from Apple would require jailbroken device to go back to iOS 8.4 before they can enjoy the benefits of the previous jailbreak exploits and tweaks, notes the Christian Today.
According to the latest rumors, Apple has already patched eight exploits in the iOS 8.4.1 that TaiG were using on iOS 8.4. This is why the TaiG team is asking its jailbreak users to not update to iOS 8.4.1, at least not for now, details Neurogadget.
Trying to outsmart one another
Having learned Apple’s new strategy that it used on TaiG for its Apple iOS 8.4 Jailbreak, Pangu decided to counter the move using its own strategy.
The Pangu jailbreak team unveiled a proof of the jailbreak concept at the HackPwn 2015 security conference just one week after Apple released the iOS 8.4.1. Pangu showed at the conference that it was able to jailbreak iOS 8.4.1 on an iPhone 6.
The Pangu Team’s jailbreak was demonstrated just a week after Apple released the software update and also amid the company’s claim of security updates for 40 known exploits coming at the heels of TaiG’s public release of its jailbreak utility for iOS 8.4.
When Apple released the new iOS 8.4.1, it rendered TaiG’s iOS 8.4 jailbreak unusable, much to the chagrin of iOS users who took in the jailbreak exploits.
Subsequently, Apple has also stopped signing all its products with iOS 8.4, which means that once a user updates to iOS 8.4.1, they will not be able to revert their device to its previous mobile operating system version. This makes it all the more important for users with a jailbroken iOS 8.4 to stay away from the update.
The American tech giant has obviously raised its battle against jailbreakers a notch higher as if to say that it means business when it said that iOS 9 will be difficult to jailbreak.
However, as if to tease Apple that it can jailbreak any iOS, the Pangu Team made some breast-beating of the iOS 8.4.1 jailbreak.
Details of the jailbreak
Pangu has already revealed in its website the details of the Apple iOS 8.4.1 jailbreak even if it has yet to officially release it. According to Pangu, it has discovered the 0day kernel vulnerabilities that are meant to control the battery portion of the iOS-operated devices.