Military Malware May Put An End To iOS Jailbreaking

Governments are willing to pay big bucks for vulnerabilities that they can back into malware, and one security expert believes that this may bring an end to jailbreaking.

The claim was made by renowned OS X and iOS hacker Charlie Miller. A few weeks ago he tweeted five reasons why the latest Evasi0n jailbreak will be the last.

Here were his five reasons for predicting the end of jailbreaking:

1. Not much demand for jailbreaking, because iOS does pretty much what everyone wants it to.
2. Bug fixes are making it harder.
3. Fewer bugs left to exploit.
4. Prominent jailbreakers are exiting the jailbreaking scene.
5. iOS exploits are worth money … lots of money.

As the use of mobile devices increases, governments around the world—both foreign and domestic—need backdoors into devices in order to be able to carry out surveillance and cyberwarfare, hence the high price tag on such exploits.

Jailbreaking relies on finding vulnerabilities in the iOS code that can be leveraged in order to take over the system, but because these bugs are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars—assuming you have the right connections—then people might not be so happy to freely give them away to be used so benevolently.

While I respect Miller, I think he's wrong here. I don't think Evasi0n will be the last iOS jailbreak, and here's why:

• I'm 100 percent confident that iOS has plenty of bugs in the code that can be made use of. There is no such thing as a secure operating system. The fact that Microsoft—with all its billions and decades of experience—hasn't managed to secure Windows tells us this.
• Not everyone has the contacts to be able to sell an iOS bug for big bucks. It's not like you can sell an iOS vulnerability on eBay (although, believe it or not, outlets do exist for such things).
• New researchers are always entering the scene, and these people bring with them a new take on how to crack the platform.
• Vulnerabilities for Windows and OS X are also worth a lot of money, but it seems that only a small fraction of these are leveraged by government-sponsored malware.
• There will always be researchers who are more interested in jailbreaking than money. This sounds strange, but given what I know of the jailbreaking community, there are researchers who do it purely for the fun of doing it.

I hope Miller is not right, because jailbreaking offers a valuable service to iOS users, and it would be a sad day if it were to end.