An interesting thread popped up on Reddit today in r/jailbreak. What started out as an AMA request (that’s a request for a person or group to participate in an ‘Ask me anything’ thread) for the evad3rs, turned into a pretty candid Q&A session with planetbeing.
Typically when an AMA request is filled, the subject(s) comes back at a later time to answer user-submitted questions. But being the nice guy that he is, after noticing the thread, planetbeing hopped on and said he’d be happy to answer any questions. And boy did he…
At the time of this writing, there were more than 100 questions in the thread. And from the looks of things, planetbeing answered almost all of them. You can view the entire session by clicking here, otherwise, we’ve collected a few of the more interesting Q&As below.
Q: Has Apple ever contacted you, or the evad3rs, for any reason?
“Yes. I got a job offer once. As far as I know, all jailbreaker interactions with Apple have been pretty positive, especially in contrast with what companies like Sony apparently do…
…I didn’t take it for personal and logistical reasons. At the time I was in Canada with a complicated visa situation. It wasn’t a solid offer anyway. I’m sure I’d’ve had to interview, etc., first but I didn’t choose to get much into the process at all.”
Q: How do you feel the future of jailbreaking looks based on how long this release took? Do you think Apple will ever just release an open iOS?
“It’s hard to say. Apple has successfully mitigated many vectors of attack in iOS 6. In this current jailbreak, we “evaded” Apple’s mitigations in the userland with several vulnerabilities I would perhaps characterize as “lame”, since these mistakes are a throwback to earlier days of iOS jailbreaking where we primarily used filesystem tricks. We only attacked Apple’s hardened security head-on in the kernel. “Lame” vulnerabilities tend to be hard to find, however, so it’s likely the next jailbreak will be tougher. That said, we also retain a few tricks that may or may not help in the future. Who knows what the weight of each factor should be when trying to determine how long the next jailbreak will take.
I think the ship has sailed for Apple to consider shipping an open iOS. The furthest they might have gone was perhaps allowing you to unlock the bootloader like the Google Nexus phones. However, I don’t think they currently have a compelling reason to.”
Q: I understand that the AppleTV jailbreaks are usually an afterthought compared to iPhones/iPads/iPods, but do you ever see it becoming a priority or a focus?
“Personally, I only work on stuff that I own and use. For example, when I was in Canada and someone sent me an American locked iPhone 4, I worked really hard on an unlock for it. I don’t really see the appeal of an Apple TV at all so it’s not something I’d likely work on, particularly since the injection part would be significantly harder anyway.
Nothing is impossible, it’s just that some things fall below the intersection of difficulty and level of interest for people.”
Q: What do you do when you’re not making jailbreaks?
“I work on web analytics software for my day job. If jailbreaking is no longer possible, then I’d probably spend my extra free time on playing those games in my Steam library that I bought on sales but never played. :p
Well, not Steam, but I preordered Heart of the Swam. I also need to finish the last dungeon in Story Mode for Guild Wars 2. Keep meaning to do that. In terms of stuff I bought but haven’t played: Crysis, FEAR, Orcs Must Die!, From Dust, …
Actually, just look here: http://steamcommunity.com/id/planetbeing/games/?tab=all“
Q: Saurik told us what tweaks/themes he has on his phone. What do you have on yours?
“I have mostly Intelliborn tweaks at the moment. Since I have to restore a lot for testing the jailbreak, I haven’t really stabilized on a set of tweaks this time around. I don’t usually like themes too much, but I’m seriously considering Ayecon.”
Q: How’s life? Plans for the future? What color is your toothbrush? What league are you in StarCraft 2? Favorite food?
“Pretty good. No immediate plans except to work my ass off. I have one of them sonicare toothbrushes. I don’t PvP on StarCraft 2 because I’m scared of sucking too much and bringing shame to my race. I like sushi and steak when I can get either.”
While the AMA request was for the entire evad3rs team, planetbeing said that the other members (two of them in Europe) were likely asleep. So it’s mostly just him answering the questions at this point, with a little bit of help from Jay Freeman, also known as saurik.
Planetbeing is an admitted Reddit addict, and is often seen lurking around the r/jailbreak subreddit. For those unfamiliar with the site, you can find the forum by visiting www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak. Folks there are generally knowledgable and nice, so it’s a useful resource.
