Maybe you have heard the term, maybe you haven’t.  Maybe you have heard it but aren’t sure what it means.  It is called ‘Jailbreaking’, and it is the process that allows iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users to run third-party unsigned code on their devices by unlocking the operating system and allowing the user root access.  Once a device is unlocked, users can download numerous extensions and themes that may be unavailable through the App Store.

With more than 85,000 iPhone apps, this could mean a hacker could score big time once they jailbreak their unit. Apple has tried fighting back by sealing off entries that hackers use to download software.  They have even gone so far as to install a device called ‘bootrom’ on their iPhones.  Bootrom is a behind-the-scene software that ensures everything is in order before fully allowing the phone to turn on.  Jailbreakers were distracting the Apple bootrom, and sneaking in to take what they wanted.  Apple of course recognized this and is working on installing smarter bootroms into their newest units.  Some call bootrom the prison guard who checks that all inmates are where they should be before letting the prisoners go about their day.

When did all of this jailbreaking begin?  It is actually a relatively new term, possibly coined in 2007 when a method was released for the first third-party game.  This game was released exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  In October of 2007, three months after the original iPhone was released, another method to jailbreak the iPhone was discovered.  In 2008, a hacker group called the iPhone Dev Team released a jailbreaking application called Pwnage Tool.  It used a graphical user interface to jailbreak 2G and 3G versions of the iPhone and the first generation of iPod touches.

In 2009, the iPhone Dev-Team continued to enhance their work along side Apple’s enhancements.  The team created ways to jailbreak the iPod Touch 2G, both tethered and untethered.  With the release of Apple’s iOS 3.0 came the Dev Teams release of PwnageTool 3.0 which allowed users of the original iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch to be jailbroken.  Apple quickly fought back with the release of iOS 3.1 that disabled the jailbreak device. But quickly following of course was Dev Teams PwnageTool 3.1-3.  By October of 2009, a man named Goerge Hotz whose alias was Geohot, released the blackra1n which allowed jailbreaking of all iPhones up to the old 3GS and iPod touch up to 3G, running iOS 3.1.2.  It followed by a more sophisticated jailbreak for the new iPhone 3GS, the new iPod Touch 2G 8GB MC model.

In February of this year, Apple released yet another protection, iOS 3.1.3, blocking jailbreaks for the third time.  This didn’t stop jailbreakers, as they figured out was to downgrade their models.  As Apple continued to come up with solutions, more and more people came up with ways to work around those solutions.

For the moment, however, the legality of jailbreaking is in question.  The Dev-Team offers its free tools without any proprietary code, so as not to violate copyright laws.  Apple recently filed a statement arguing that jailbreaking constitutes copyright infringement because it incorporates a modified version of Apple’s bootloader.  

Although, jailbreaking is reasonably new, it seems that it will always be around when it comes to free applications vs. fee applications.

THIS IS A PRETTY COOL THIN LIZZY VIDEO OF JAILBREAK!
Video Rating: 4 / 5