A year ago and specifically a year and two days ago, we published an article entitled "So the jailbreak era is over?" You find it in this link In it, he talked about the causes and indicators of weakness that are emerging in the world of jailbreaking, and the developers abandoned it, and he wondered whether the era of jailbreak is over. A year later, the answer came, which is that the era of jailbreaking continues, but the popularity of the jailbreak has ended. This answer is not a guess but an actual answer from the current reality of the jailbreak.

Why did the overwhelming popularity of the jailbreak end?

About 3 days ago, the highly popular Electra jailbreak was released for iOS 11.3 and iOS 11.3.1, and the team later released 3 updates for the tool, the most recent of which was yesterday evening, in which the jailbreak was supported for the first, second and third beta versions of iOS 11.4, and they advised those who want to get benefits iOS 11.4 and the jailbreak together to revert to this version. But despite this, the jailbreak did not get enough popularity.

Several years ago, the jailbreak article and its publication were among the most popular articles on our site, and some of them easily exceeded 100 readers. This was happening years ago and in the Arab world. The popularity of the "jailbreak" was overwhelming, but something happened to undermine this popularity. The Electra team has added a "counter" on the jailbreak site showing who has successfully jailbroken. Now, after more than 3 days, how much does the site appear?

Only 108 thousand people around the world have jailbroken their devices, and let's assume that the number will increase to 150 or 200. Is this a number! The team and the various sites made it clear that this counter counts who did the jailbreak and not who downloaded the tool. And they mentioned a text of this

Electra would need to report every successful jailbreak to the Electra Team's web server

There is no exact number for the number of effective iOS 11 devices currently, but it will not actually be less than three quarters of a billion, meaning that the popularity of the jailbreak now is almost 1-2 devices for every 10000 devices in the market. What is the secret of this collapse?


Reasons for the end of the popularity of the jailbreak

There are many reasons, not one reason, for the jailbreak to decline, and these are the most important of them:

Jailbreak for an old versionYou will always have to stay on an old iOS system to jailbreak it; A week ago, you had to continue with iOS 11.1.2 as a maximum, in order to have a jailbreak, and currently it only supports iOS 11.3.1 and the trial version of iOS 11.4, not the final one. Previously, a jailbreak was done for the latest version, and it is advised not to upgrade until the jailbreak is released to the next version, but now you should not upgrade from the beginning pending the release of the jailbreak of your system. Imagine if a jailbreaker had to stay in iOS 11.3.1 and not upgrade to iOS 11.4, which was released a month and a half ago. That is, for a month and a half, you do not have the latest version and also do not have a jailbreak.

Divergent jailbreak: Completes the previous point; Despite the increase in the speed of the jailbreak and its current release, but imagine with me that the jailbreak was released for iOS 11.1.2 at the end of February at the time, there were already newer versions such as iOS 11.2, iOS 11.2.1, iOS 11.2.2, iOS 11.2.5 and iOS 11.2.6. All this will be ignored because you are waiting for the jailbreak, then Apple launched iOS 11.3, then iOS 11.3.1, and iOS 11.4 in a period of two months, and we did not see a new jailbreak. Imagine that you have to wait from the end of February and then the next, the beginning of July, i.e. 4 and a half months, and ignore 7 updates.

The system has significantly evolved: Another important point is that in the past we used to jailbreak to better communicate messages, such as the BiteSMS application, to respond to messages without opening the application; We were carrying a tool like sbsettings that used to make us swipe up to turn on and off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the network and there are those looking for a tool to record screen and other things. Some even preferred jailbreaking to steal apps. Now a lot of the features are already present in the system itself. Even theft of apps can now be done without jailbreak. The jailbreak has lost many of its strengths, although there are continuous reasons, of course, but it has lost many of its strengths.

The loophole trading is very lucrativeIn the past, there was an acceptable return. In an old interview with Cydia founder Jay Freeman, he said that in 2011 he paid $ 8 million to developers. But now the situation is different as the developers abandoned the cydia, and thus the revenues decreased. Now, if a developer finds a vulnerability in iOS, if he exploits it to jailbreak, he may not be getting any returns; But he can report it to Apple and get a reward of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. And he may be more coveted if it is an important loophole, and he informs the intelligence services about it, and he gets rewarded twice as much. Check out our old article on trading vulnerabilities across this link. Incidentally, there is an Emirati security company offering rewards of up to $ 3 million for serious iOS vulnerabilities. So why does it do a free jailbreak?

By the way, do you notice in the following picture that the number of jailbreakers in 2012 was 1.5 million? Compare this to the 108 jailbreakers in 2018 even though the total number of devices is 3 times or more

Hackers are a security employee: Dozens of times we hear that a certain hacker did a jailbreak and publishes on his site that he penetrated iOS, but in the end the hackers say that he did this for technical reasons for work and that he is an employee in a specific entity such as "Ali Baba" and will not publish the jailbreak. Corporations are now hiring and hiring hackers to infiltrate their own and those of their competitors, in order to develop their defenses against the hackers.

Quick updates: Because Apple has become giving hackers large rewards and appointing security researchers from them, so it decided to cancel its old philosophy, which is the large, divergent updates, and intend a new method, which is continuous and fast updates, to close the holes as soon as they are revealed. Previously, the jailbreak used to last for weeks until Apple shut it down in the next major update, but now Apple can release a quick update to close the loopholes. This is if Apple did not update the system and close the vulnerability before the hackers discovered it in the first place and launched the jailbreak, and this is the secret that we often find that the latest iOS version does not jailbreak it.

Of course, all of the above are various reasons, each of which contributed to weakening the jailbreak and its popularity. But we never say that it does not exist nor that no one is looking for it but that it is not as popular as before.

Why do you think the popularity of jailbreak collapsed? And if you are a fan and quit, then tell us why did you stay away from the jailbreak?

Sources:

Vice | BGR | CultofmacIDB | CoolStar

Related articles