14 DAY TRIAL // Why go with a free download and hope for donations when you can sell it to the government for a cool half a million and live the high life? That’s what Kevin Mahaffey has to say about the next round of exploits to jailbreak future iOS versions.
The cofounder and CTO of mobile security company Lookout, Kevin Mahaffey, reveals that the “current price” of iOS zero day exploits (required for jailbreaking) is $500,000, or roughly €383,000.
Evasi0n, the latest public jailbreak tool released by a dedicated team of hackers known as the evad3rs, is undoubtedly a profitable one. But does the team make this kind of money from donations? It is unclear, at this point.
Renowned security guru Charlie Miller gave his own estimate on the price hackers could fetch for a jailbreak. He said $250,000 (€192,000), but that was a while ago.
Starting with the upcoming iOS 6.1.3, Apple is making inroads to patch the jailbreak exploits in evasi0n, which leads security researchers like Miller and Mahaffey to believe that evasi0n will be the last public jailbreak to see the light of day.
However, it’s not easy to sell such an expensive exploit to the government / the military, even if you happen to stumble upon it, says the MIT site. According to Tom Simonite writing for a site founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), “The zero day market is a shadowy one, so getting a price like those estimated by Mahaffey and Miller would require having the right connections.”
The next major version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 7 is expected to be almost impenetrable.
With each round of cat-and-mouse chasing between them and the hackers, Apple learns a bit more about what is required to secure its platform, hence the ever-growing prices of these exploits.
Chances are that the next jailbreak will go straight to the military, as forecasted by Mahaffey, Miller, and other hackers who share their convictions.