iOS 7.1 Jailbreak Expectations

If there’s one thing that we have learned over the last few years, it’s that, rightly or wrongly, the jailbreak community expects a lot. The majority of the complexities involved in researching vulnerabilities, exploiting those bugs and then tying it all nicely together into a jailbreak package capable of mass distribution are abstracted away from the end-user. This is undoubtedly how it should be, but the trade-off is that users become impatient and irritable due to a lack of understanding of the process and how much work is actually involved in effectively producing a jailbreak from scratch once Apple have slammed the security door in our faces.

First and foremost we expect to see a first glimpse of iOS 8 at this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June. We also expect to see a first developer seed going live to registered developers during the course of WWDC week. A public version of iOS 8 will likely ship with the iPhone 6 sometime in September or October. That’s approximately six or seven months in the future, so we of course expect to see an untethered 7.1 solution made available before then – all going well. However, if the first seed of iOS 8 is found to have exploitable vulnerabilities in then the Evad3rs could potentially make the call to hold off on iOS 7 and focus attention on liberating iOS 8 with the hope that any vulnerabilities are not patched as part of the process of going from beta to public.

iOS 7.1 Jailbreak with Evasi0n?

If the Evad3rs team are involved in the research or production of an iOS 7.1 untether, which we expect them to be, then it’s highly likely that we will see an updated version of Evasi0n7 shipping. The distributed tools and software that makes jailbreaking possible on a mass scale has improved exponentially over the years. What used to be a laborious and overly technical process has now been condensed into a single one click solution (where possible).

If and when we see a 7.1 jailbreak being made available our money is on a Mac, Windows and Linux version of the Evasi0n one click tool being pushed out to support all devices capable of being exploited.

iOS 7.1 Jailbreak Release Date

This is entirely an unknown. The chances are that @pod2g, @musclenerd, @pimskeks and @planetbeing are actively working on finding a solution as we speak. The Evad3rs team has learned pretty quickly over the last twelve months to attempt to keep things low-key at all costs. Public announcements of progress do nothing more than excite an already excited community, which in turn prompts a barrage of questions over email and social media sites like Twitter. Working in silence behind-the-scenes often promotes efficiency and the ability to ship a lot quicker.

It would be great to think that 7.1 would be liberated on an untethered basis prior to WWDC beginning in June. Realistically speaking will that happen? We honestly don’t think so. This year’s JailbreakCon is scheduled to take place in San Francisco over the next few days where those attending will undoubtedly force the issue and invite an open discussion on the future of the 7.1 jailbreak. It’ll be interesting to see what comes from that.

iOS 7.1 Jailbreak – The Conclusion

All we really have at the moment in time is conjecture and educated guesses based on historical happenings in the jailbreak world. The release of last year’s P0sixspwn jailbreak for iOS 6.1.3 – 6.1.5 users reportedly burned a valuable exploit that developers were attempting to keep under wraps as their wildcard for future jailbreaks. Depending on where you look, or who you talk to, there are different versions of that story making it unlikely that we will ever know the real truth. Will that prove a costly decision going forward? Time will tell. All we really know for sure is that if there’s a will and desire to get across the finishing line, then it will undoubtedly happen. We just need to know if the Evad3rs have that desire burning within them.