''JailbreakMe'' is a series of jailbreaks for Apple's

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system used for smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on the ...

that took advantage of flaws in the

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

browser on the device, providing an immediate one-step jailbreak, unlike more common jailbreaks, such as Blackra1n and redsn0w, that require plugging the device into a computer and running the jailbreaking software from the desktop. JailbreakMe included

Cydia Cydia is a graphical user interface of APT for iOS. It enables a user to find and install software unauthorized by Apple on jailbroken iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices. It also refers to the digital distribution platform for software on ...

, a package management interface that serves as an alternative to the

App Store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...

. Although it does not support modern devices, the websites remain available for compatible devices. JailbreakMe's first version in 2007 worked on

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

and

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a po ...

firmware 1.1.1, the second version was released in August 2010 for firmware 4.0.1 and earlier, and the third and final version was released in July 2011 for iOS versions 4.3 to 4.3.3 (and was the first jailbreak for the iPad 2). JailbreakMe 3.0 has been used to jailbreak at least two million devices.

Versions

JailbreakMe 1.0 (iOS 1.1.1)

JailbreakMe, released on October 28, 2007, was originally used to jailbreak the

and

running the 1.1.1 version of

, then named iPhone OS. Using a TIFF exploit against

, it installed Installer.app. The vulnerability used in this exploit was patched by Apple in the 1.1.2 firmware. This tool, also called "AppSnapp", was created by a group of nine developers, and hosted by Conceited Software. The team estimated that 100,000 devices were jailbroken in the first three days of its release, growing past 1 million in the first month.

JailbreakMe 2.0 (iOS 3.1.2–4.0.1)

JailbreakMe 2.0 "Star", released by comex on August 1, 2010, exploited a

vulnerability Vulnerability refers to "the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally." The understanding of social and environmental vulnerability, as a methodological approach, involves ...

in the FreeType library used while rendering PDF files. This was the first publicly available jailbreak for the iPhone 4, able to jailbreak iOS 3.1.2 through 4.0.1 on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad models then current. This jailbreak was activated by visiting the jailbreakme.com web page on the device's Safari web browser. The vulnerability used by JailbreakMe 2.0 was patched by Apple in

4.0.2 for iPhone and iPod Touch, and iOS 3.2.2 for

iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...

JailbreakMe 3.0 (iOS 4.3–4.3.3)

JailbreakMe 3.0 "Saffron", released on July 6, 2011, will jailbreak most iOS devices on iOS 4.3-4.3.3 and iPad 2 on 4.3.3. It was the first publicly available jailbreak for iPad 2. JailbreakMe 3.0 exploited a FreeType parser security flaw (similar to JailbreakMe 2.0), using the form of a PDF file rendered by Mobile Safari, which then used a kernel vulnerability to complete the untethered jailbreak. Comex also released a patch for this FreeType flaw, named PDF Patcher 2, which is available as a free package installable via

. A few days before the initial release, a beta tester leaked JailbreakMe 3.0 to the public. Comex said on Twitter that this put him on a "time limit" to release the final version quickly. The JailbreakMe website looked similar to downloading an

app. It included a blue button indicating "FREE", which changed into a green "INSTALL" button when pressed once, much like an application on the App Store. After tapping "INSTALL", Safari would close,

would load as a new app, and the device would be jailbroken with no reboot necessary. On July 15, 2011, Apple released iOS 4.3.4 (GSM) and 4.2.9 (CDMA) to patch the flaws used by JailbreakMe. Comex received a Pwnie Award at the Black Hat Conference in 2011 for "Best Client-Side Bug" for this work. Comex was hired by Apple as an intern in August of 2011.

JailbreakMe 4.0 (iOS 9.1–9.3.4)

JailbreakMe 4.0, released by tihmstar on December 12, 2017, exploited three serious vulnerabilities (), already utilized by the spyware

Pegasus Pegasus (; ) is a winged horse in Greek mythology, usually depicted as a white stallion. He was sired by Poseidon, in his role as horse-god, and foaled by the Gorgon Medusa. Pegasus was the brother of Chrysaor, both born from Medusa's blood w ...

. It was mainly based on HomeDepot, a semi-untethered jailbreak released by jk9357. HomeDepot targeted all 32-bit devices between iOS 9.1 and iOS 9.3.4. The vulnerabilities used by HomeDepot and JailbreakMe 4.0 were patched by Apple in

9.3.5. The jailbreak was hosted by Corellium founder Chris Wade a
jailbreak.me
Whilst technically semi-untethered, the jailbreak could be made fully untethered with the use of tihmstar's UntetherHomeDepot package.

TotallyNotSpyware (iOS 10)

TotallyNotSpyware, created by the JakeBlair420 team, released on September 7, 2018, is a JailbreakMe-style exploit that works on any 64-bit device running between iOS 10 to 10.3.3. As with JailbreakMe 4.0, the web browser is induced to sideload Cydia using a payload, either Meridian or doubleH3lix. It is hosted a
totally-not.spyware.lol
and is semi-untethered.

Domain name transfer

On October 7, 2011, Conceited Apps, which had been allowing Comex to use the domain name for hosting, sold the domain name jailbreakme.com to an allegedly "unknown" party. SaurikIT acquired the domain the next day.

Domain redirection

jailbreakme.com
would redirect t
cydia.saurik.com
if an incompatible device was detected. Later, it redirects t
totally-not.spyware.lol

Compatible iOS versions

References

External links

* {{iOS IPhone IOS software Homebrew software IOS jailbreaks Computer-related introductions in 2010