A few days ago we saw a video that showed the various iOS 11 features inspired by jailbreak apps or Android. At the time, I said that Apple should still unofficially support iOS jailbreaks in the future, as they bring up some great ideas for the future of the mobile operating system. It turns out that iOS 11 has already been jailbroken, and the latest developer beta can be hacked to run unsupported apps on it.
Before you get too excited, you should know this hack is just proof that iOS 11 security can be beaten. The iOS 11 jailbreak was demoed at the Mobile Security Conference (MOSEC) 2017 in China as a proof of concept, Redmond Pie explains.
There’s no guarantee this particular jailbreak will become public in the future, or that it’ll even work once the final version of iOS 11 will be released.
ios 10&11 jailbreak by keenlab～！ pic.twitter.com/BfZ0utqHPv
— Min(Spark) Zheng (@SparkZheng) June 23, 2017
This jailbreak solution is attributed to “Liang Chen of Tencent Keen Lab,” which doesn’t sound like any of the jailbreak groups that periodically release public jailbreaks.
Even if those groups can also hack Apple’s latest iOS release, don’t expect them to release anything at least until September, when iOS 11 rolls out to all devices. Any sooner and Apple could patch the exploits used in the final version of the software.
Jailbreaking iOS might help developers sell apps that would otherwise be banned from the App Store, but jailbreaks also have negative consequences. Such hacks are highly prized by intelligence agencies and other parties, which could use them for malicious purposes. That explains why hacking iOS can be a very lucrative business, and why some hackers might be more interested in selling their tools to the highest bidder rather than making them available online.
