Posts about the latest Jailbreak exploit/software for the new Apple devices are always pretty popular and this looks like it might turn out to be pretty interesting.
It seems like at the moment the latest iOS update has been cracked for iPod Touch and earlier iPhones (3GS) but there’s no working Jailbreak at the moment for the newly released iPhone 4 – something to do with the baseband I think. I’m not super familiar with Apple stuff though so do correct me if I’m wrong.
The note about this exploit comes at the bottom of this post:
The latest Apple TV isn’t even in people’s hands and its already close to being jailbroken, according to members of a hacker group that has a track record of successfully freeing iDevices from the artificial shackles of Steve Jobs & Co.
According to a post on Monday on the iPhone Dev Team Blog, members were able to crack the customized iOS firmware shortly after its release on Monday on an Apple download site. The release came the same day Apple began shipping the $99 device.
The download, which allows users to restore Apple TVs to their original factory settings, confirms rumors that Jobs’s “hobby” does in fact run iOS. More importantly, it gave iPhone Dev Team members an opportunity to run it through an in-development iOS 4.1 hacking tool they developed called SHAtter. They quickly extracted the cryptographic key used to lock down the Apple TV firmware, which is the first step in finding a reliable jailbreak.
The funny thing is AppleTV device hasn’t even shipped out yet and it’s already been jailbroken, they have also confirmed that it’s running on a version of iOS. This might be interesting for development of an iPhone 4 jailbreak.
Jailbreaks are a pretty hot topic at the moment with the iPhone 4 slowly releasing around the World after having been out commercially in the US for a couple of months now. It could set things up for a whole new slew of applications to come out too, imagine a hacked AppleTV with a custom iOS firmware or something else running on it (Android/MeeGo) hooked up via HDMI to your LCD/Plasma TV – now that’d be sweet!
It’s unclear exactly what could be done with a jailbroken Apple TV. Compared with other iDevices, it has a paltry amount of storage space. And, of course, there’s still the prospect that Apple will make last-minute changes to Apple TVs that patch the vulnerability SHatter exploits.
But as we’ve reckoned before, the mini USB port included with the Apple TV opens the door to running unauthorized code loaded on a patchstick. That in turn might allow users to run iPhone and iPad apps or add amenities such as SSH access, a USB-supported hard drive or even the ability to stream shows from Hulu.
All of that is in the future. With Monday’s commencement of Apple TV shipments, it won’t take long for us to find out.
The shipping starts next week and I’m pretty sure Apple is going to be doing something about this, so we’ll find out about the future of this neat hack pretty soon. We’ll also see if a spin-off iPhone 4 jailbreak comes out of this.
You can find direct download links for the AppleTV firmware files here:
AppleTV Firmware Download Locations
Source: The Register