I’m not really a fan of jailbreaking. Some of my friends have attempted to jailbreak their iPhones, iPod Touch and first-gen iPads. Even though they were successful, the common complaint I heard from some of them was that the jailbroken device became more unstable. I think that’s a poor tradeoff. But from what I’ve been hearing about a vulnerability in the current iOS, it looks like jailbreaking will actually be a solution.
A couple of days ago it was announced in various websites that the iPad 2 can now be jailbroken. It took months before the hacker community was able to find a way around the iPad 2 and successfully jailbreak it. But the pathway the jailbreak takes also reveals a potential danger for iOS devices.
When Comex released the newest version of Jailbreakme.com, the web site that makes jailbreaking your Apple devices so easy, it was revealed that the jailbreaking method used was to exploit the so called zero day bug that is contained in iOS. The exploit is deemed potentially dangerous because it is leaves devices susceptible to hacking attacks and allow them to gain control of the iOS device. Unfortunately, Apple hasn’t released a patch yet to fix the zero-day bug.
But for people who use jailbreakme.com, the site already offers a patch to plug the security breach, but you can only apply it to your iOS device after you’ve jailbroken it. So in effect, it looks like jailbreaking may be the best step to take if you are afraid of the zero day bug exploit and the damage it can potentially do to your device.
But expect Apple to come out with a patch soon. The company has been quite fast in delivering patches after jailbreaking exploits are released. Expect a maximum of two weeks before Apple releases their zero day bug patch.