Thursday, August 12, 2010

Hole in my Safari

Yesterday Apple released a patch for the security hole in Safari. This was the same hole which was used for the "Jailbreak Me" Jailbreak which was so easy to use.
The security hole had to do with the way PDF files were handled, and was quite serious. The Jailbreak community released a "PDF patch" of sorts - basically a warning every time a PDF was opened on iPhone a dialog pops up with a warning and an OK and Cancel button. This patch made reading valid PDFs in various applications, including iBooks, unusable. It also made using the Zinio reader - which is a reader for digital magazines like PC Magazine, unusable (four popups for one page). So the patch was updated to allow iBooks to work, but it was a kludge and I wondered if the developer would get round to the Zinio reader.

I was beginning to wonder about either uninstalling the PDF patch - and opening up my iPhone to hacking, or updating the firmware, which would fix the PDF security hole but then I wouldn't be able to Jailbreak my iPhone probably until after iOS firmware 4.1 is released.

Anyway, today Saurik released a patch which basically does what the Apple iOS 4.02 firmware update does - patches the PDF security hole properly, and the Jailbreak stays intact. Thank you Saurik (and whoever else helped to code this patch)!

Thursday, August 05, 2010

Jailbroken again, yeah!

Last night ran a jailbreak on my iPhone 4. I had expected to wait a few months before being able to do this. Anyway, this was the easiest jailbreak I've run so far - simply pointing the Safari browser on the iPhone to a website and sliding a button (nice touch that!). The jailbreak had been out for several days, so I had no problem getting onto the website, and there was enough info about what to expect, and the jailbreak tools had been updated. The first thing I downloaded was SBSettings - that had been the thing I'd missed the most on my iPhone 4. It makes it so quick to toggle Wi-Fi on or off, and also shutting down my iPhone at night is a swipe and two taps - no pressing down a hardware button then swiping. Okay, now the downside. My iPhone was taking about 35 seconds to boot up (From turned off to the login screen). Now it takes about 55 seconds. Apart from Cydia and SBSettings, the only other Jailbroken Apps I've installed are Rock (because I have a few Apps licensed from them) and My3G, which I'm not sure is even working properly. Oh well, the slower boot time is a small price to pay for the freedom of having a jailbroken iPhone again.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone