14 DAY TRIAL // An untethered jailbreak for the latest iOS firmware available has been created and demoed on video, though it remains to be seen whether or not developer winocm is willing to roll it out publicly before the launch of iOS 8.
Sometimes it takes months to find flaws in Apple’s mobile operating system. But if you’re lucky (and talented) like winocm was last week, you can find the bugs/exploits to develop a new jailbreak within hours.
On May 18, female jailbreaker winocm announced on Twitter, “I was bored today, so I did this,” she wrote while throwing in a YouTube link. The embedded clip shows a jailbroken iPhone running iOS 7.1.1 with Cydia installed.
Winocm carefully shows viewers that the jailbreak sticks even after a reboot, essentially confirming its “untethered” nature, sort of like the Holy Grail of jailbreaks.
“Oh yeah, this is iOS 7.1.1 untethered if you didn't notice earlier. (iPhone 4 GSM though, don't want to mess with any other devices that I have. Would work elsewhere... if you put in the effort),” winocm adds on YouTube.
People commenting on Twitter and YouTube are naturally begging the hacker to release the untethered iOS 7.1.1 jailbreak publicly, in what would allow thousands of users to hack their devices and use mods, themes, and pirated apps on their respective iDevices with the latest firmware available from Apple.
However, despite achieving this only on old-generation devices, there’s a chance winocm will save her jailbreak exploits for later, when iOS 8 is released. On the other hand, if the exploits are only usable in iOS 7 firmware, then she will most likely roll out her jailbreak soon.
But if the bugs are worth preserving in hope that iOS 8 will be hackable through these exploited flaws, then you can be certain winocm will not want Apple patching them.
Finding vulnerabilities to exploit in iOS has become a very difficult task in recent years, so giving Apple the heads up regarding any flaw that might lead to a jailbreak is not something these hackers want to do.
It has been estimated that the cost of an all-new jailbreak (such as the first jailbreak developed for iOS 7 in 2013) can run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
However, the hackers responsible for these jailbreaks have stressed on numerous occasions that they are not selling their hacks to the government / army / intelligence agencies, preferring to rely on donations and page views on their blogs as their means of capitalization on these hacks.
