iOS 7.1.1 Jailbreak: Hacker Demonstrates Tethered Jailbreak On iPhone 5s

Although Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS 7.1.1 still remains jailbreak-free, hackers in the jailbreak community are working hard to develop a new tool to jailbreak the latest version of the mobile operating system on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The latest development has come from an iOS hacker who claimed to have jailbroken iOS 7.1.1 on the iPhone 5s.

Stefan Esser, an iOS security researcher better known as i0n1c, recently showcased an iOS 7.1.1 untethered jailbreak on the iPhone 5c, which was followed by a new untethered solution demonstrated on the iPhone 4 by another hacker called Winocm.

On Sunday, Yeongjin Jang, an iOS hacker took to Twitter to announce that he had managed to install an unsigned app on a jailbroken iPhone 5s running iOS 7.1.1. While jailbreak tweaks demonstrated by i0n1c and Winocm were untethered, Jang’s solution is a tethered one.

Jang also uploaded a four-minute video clip showcasing the iOS 7.1.1 jailbreak. Here is the link to the video.

In the video, Jang installs and runs an unsigned app on an iPhone 5s, but since the phone cannot reboot without being connected to a computer and assisted by a special recovery app, the jailbreak process showed by Jang is classified as a “tethered” one, Redmond Pie reported.

An untethered jailbreak, on the other hand, means that the device used in the process can be rebooted time and again without connecting it to a PC or Mac. Although it is unclear whether Jang’s method uses the same technique used by i0n1c, it has been confirmed by i0n1c that the jailbreak is legitimate.

“The work includes followings. 1. Bypassing sandbox, 2. Getting root permission, and 3. bypassing codesign,” Jang said, explaining how he achieved the jailbreak.

With nearly two weeks to go for Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where the company is expected to unveil the next-generation version of its mobile operating system, called the iOS 8, there is growing concern that the exploits that hackers have found in iOS 7.1.1 need to be saved until the final version of iOS 8 reaches the public.