Perhaps the most well known member of the Chronic Dev Team, Joshua Hill aka p0sixninja, is no longer a member. That’s right; the famous developer has quit being a part of the team that was responsible for many long-awaited and important jailbreaks. Out of these, perhaps the most notable was Grenpois0n 4.2.1; released after months of wait by none other than the Chronic Dev Team. Even the latest, Absinthe, has had p0sixninja’s work behind it. Needless to say, the developer has played a great and important role for the Jailbreak community over the years and his leaving will likely have a significant impact on the chronic Dev Team itself.
Joshua Hill made the announcement via Twitter. Apart from letting everyone know that it was never about the money, the hacker and developer also tweeted a couple of intriguing things. Have a look for yourself:
From these tweets, it is clear that the developer was in Vegas. This is because the hacker was at a massive hacking convention whose name some of you might be familiar with; Defcon. At this large scale convention, programmers and security professionals gather to watch presentations etc. Now, naturally hackers alongside representatives from firms and companies such as Apple are present too. This brings us back to the tweets. What’s an iBoot 0day?
According to the developer himself, it’s an exploit worth $50,000. Naturally, this seems like quite an exaggeration. Couple it with the fact that he’s offering to give it way for $50, with the addition of an iPhone 4 and it seems downright absurd. However, if you see what security expert Paul Pols tweeted about it, it begins to seem more likely:
The exploit that p0sixninja has mentioned possibly has the capability to jailbreak devices running iOS 6, untethered. Not only does that include the next gen iPhone but also the 1080p Apple TV. However, if it leaks Apple can patch it up with a simple firmware update. For this reason, you’d expect that Apple may have some slight interest in the developer’s extremely cheap offer of $50. And guess what? The individual who has apparently sorted out a deal has been shown to be an Apple employee thanks to Google cache. Prior to the deal being sorted out, James Magahern removed all links to the Cupertino company from his LinkedIn profile but we know otherwise:
What this means is that the exploit may very well be in the hands of someone who’ll hand it over to Apple in turn. Some might consider this a disservice to the jailbreak community as the developer could have handed it over to someone within the jailbreak community to keep it safe. That aside, we wish Joshua Hill luck in all his future endeavors, he certainly has given a lot to the community. Stay tuned to TechSliver to find out more on this.
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