Pangu Team, a Chinese developer team known for releasing jailbreaks for a number of older iOS versions, has demonstrated a jailbreak for iOS 8.4.1.
The team has unveiled a proof of concept at the HackPwn 2015 security conference last week showing that it was able to jailbreak iOS 8.4.1 on an iPhone 6, despite Apple's rollout of security updates for 40 known exploits following TaiG's public release of its jailbreak utility for iOS 8.4. Pangu Team's jailbreak was demoed just a week following Apple's release of the software update.
Jailbreaking an iPhone allows users to gain root access to the iOS file system, but Apple does not officially endorse it, as it considers jailbreaking a threat to the security of iOS. However, many users wish to gain full control of their iPhones and be able to download apps, themes, extensions and other software that are not normally available for iOS devices that are not jailbroken.
The latest jailbreak from Pangu Team, however, will not be made available to the public, with the release of iOS 9 just around the corner, the team says on its Weibo account. Doing so will likely provide Apple the chance to patch up the exploits used to jailbreak iOS 8.4.1, which Pangu Team hopes to use for jailbreaking iOS 9, a more attractive option to jailbreakers. Still, the live demo remains important, as it shows that developer teams will continue to find exploits to jailbreak the latest version of iOS.
For those who are looking to jailbreak their iPhones, the best recourse is to stay on iOS 8.4. Apple has recently stopped signing iOS 8.4.1, which means users who upgrade to the latest version of the software will no longer be able to go back to iOS 8.4 without losing their jailbreak, and the only hope they have is for Pangu Team, or other developer teams working on similar utilities, to release an iOS 9 jailbreak as soon as possible. Meanwhile, iOS 8.4 can still be jailbroken using TaiG's jailbreak utility for iOS 8.4.
Jailbreakers have been seeing a whirlwind of activity within the last couple of months. In June, Pangu Team, which is best known for jailbreaking iOS 8.1 and iOS 7.1, demonstrated a jailbreak for iOS 8.3 at the Mobile Security Conference. This was followed by the public release of a jailbreak utility for the same OS by TaiG. When Apple rolled out iOS 8.4 later in the same month, TaiG again followed with the almost immediate release of a jailbreak for iOS 8.4, which is the latest iOS version to date that can be jailbroken.
Photo: John Karakatsanis | Flickr
