New iPhone / iPod Jailbreak Exploit Found, Could Mean Trouble for Apple

So up until now, jailbreaking your iPhone was a fun horrible game of cat and mouse between Apple and the developers hell-bent on keeping the iPhone free of restrictions. The iPhone Dev Team, Chronix Dev Team, or any of the other numerous developers working on Apple jailbreaks, would find a software exploit, use it to hack the phone and then Apple would come out with a firmware update to close the exploit and start the cycle anew.

Well, it seems that, thanks to Pod2G, a developer for the Chronix Dev Team, that this game will end, at least for a bit. He claims to have found an exploit in the Boot ROM that would allow him and other jailbreaking developers to implement a jailbreak for the iPhones and iPod Touches. Now, that may sound like just another beginning to the cycle of the cat and mouse game, but the difference here is that the Boot ROM on an iPhone/iPod Touch is NOT able to be updated by a firmware update. The Boot ROM is implemented by the factory making the device right before it ships out, so once it is out the door, the only way to change it is to bring the device back in for servicing (or correct the issue for future manufactured devices, of course).

In other words, theoretically, you use his jailbreak and then update your phone’s software all you want, without Apple being able to do anything about it.

Hopefully his exploit works when he releases it some time in the near future. If it does, it could mean Apple needs to reevaluate if anti-jailbreaking is worth the cost involved to replace hardware instead of just software.

Thoughts? Think it’ll work?