Jailbreaking iOS 10 has been largely frustrating and the only usable tools that came out on the release were from Luca Todesco - the semi-tethered Yalu jailbreak. It used to be that a jailbreak release is expected immediately following Apple's iOS rollout but the wait now takes forever. Is public jailbreaking dead?
It might be as the usual names responsible for previous solutions are no longer around. Team Evad3rs simply disappeared and the same goes for TaiG. Chinese hacking group Pangu was last active around iOS 9.x though prior to iOS 10 release rumors came out the devs from China was working to unlocking iOS 10 and even demoed the cracked software via the MOSEC 2016. Nothing came out of it.
It was Todesco who made the jailbreaking possible though his efforts were but a semblance of the glorious past. For many, the Yalu1011 and Yalu102 jailbreaks were largely unusable. The latter got stuck with beta status and the former only became more functional with the modification offered by extra_recipe+yalux. For the most part, the Todesco jailbreaks fell short of expectations not because the creator lacked skills but more on Apple's designs. Starting with iOS 10, the tech giant deployed nearly weekly updates to patch vulnerabilities on its mobile OS and frustrate any attempts to jailbreak. And the ploy succeeded.
No other jailbreak was seen apart from Yalu and even Todesco was so disillusioned he declared he'd be out of the scene following the release of iOS 10.3.x. The hacker said iOS as it stands now is nearly impossible to crack open and security researchers said the new iOS file system is to be blamed. Supposedly, the encryption and security protocol that rolled out beginning with iOS 10.3.1 proved a hard shell to crack. So it would be unsurprising if jailbreaking will see its demise no thanks to APFS file system.
But is it really the enhanced iOS security features alone that halted the arrival of public jailbreak tools? As suggested by WCCFTech in a report, no jailbreak solution is coming out lately because providing free iOS cracks is no longer rewarding. One good example was the admission made by security researcher Adam Donenfeld that he had discovered a number of KPP exploits on iOS 10.3.1 but opted to alert Apple on the bugs, presumably for a bounty. Donenfeld said a vulnerability he detected will be shared to the public but it's doubtful if the bug will amount to anything close to a jailbreak.
It's clear, the report said, jailbreaks are hard to come by these days because of two things - Apple is certainly making life difficult for creators of public jailbreak and at the same time, rewarding for hackers. Either the iPhone make is paying for exploits or somebody else. WCCFTech said devs can make up to $1 million for bugs find they sell to interested parties.
This should explain why the iOS 10 jailbreak that Team Pangu had twice teased about did not materialize. And the likelihood is the iOS 10.3.2 and iOS 11 jailbreaks that KeenLab, a group of security researchers from China, demoed recently will not become publicly available solutions. They will end up on the hands of the highest bidder.
As WCCFTech observed, the future is bleak for the public jailbreaking scene and "the chance is high that we won't see a future jailbreak for iPhone."
