iOS 7.1/7.1.1 Untethered Jailbreak Burns Two Exploits

Yesterday everyone was so happy that a group of Chinese hackers released Pangu untethered jailbreak for iOS 7.1/iOS 7.1.1. But it looks like that this new untethered jailbreak comes with some bad news. iOS hacker iH8sn0w has just confirmed that Pangu jailbreak tweak burns two exploits that could have potentially been used towards an iOS 8 jailbreak. I want to emphasize the word “potentially” in that sentence, because it is fully possible that Apple would have patched the vulnerabilities before the release of iOS 8 in the first place. But now, they most certainly will.

According to a new tweet from iH8sn0w,the only exploits burned relate to code signing and the kernel, alongside the “syslogd chown” vulnerability that was already disclosed at the Black Hat hacking conference in August. Interestingly, the jailbreak also contains code that will make it compatible with iOS 7.1.2 once the software update is publicly released, which could be as early as this Friday…

The release of the iOS 7.1.1 untethered jailbreak just three months before iOS 8 is expected to be released has sparked an age-old debate about the timing of jailbreak releases. There are those that are happy that an iOS 7.1.1 jailbreak has been released, while others are disappointed that the exploits were wasted on a smaller point update instead of a major new version like iOS 8.