Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back • Hacker News Board

Re: Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

#51

Post by r00fus » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:29 AM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #49

baroffoos wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need physical access AND the device pin. None of these hacks allow you to decrypt the device without the pin. The best you can do is load malware that would grab the pin when the user types it in so the defense for this is if the government ever takes your phone for inspection make sure to reboot it before typing in a pin.

Even in the case of an evil maid attack, a device that has been out of your sight and then demands that you enter the passcode instead of allowing you to use biometrics is immediately suspicious.

Uh - this is the standard on iOS - after a certain amount of time or reboot or the power button x5 shortcut, iOS will demand your passcode instead of TouchID/FaceID.

Re: Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

#52

Post by Lt_Riza_Hawkeye » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:31 AM UTC

krackers wrote: post #6

nerdbaggy wrote: post #2

Interesting that the writers of this article are a company that sells a library to help developers detect their app running on jailbroken devices. https://blog.trailofbits.com/2017/10/12/ios-jailbreak-detect...

>library to help developers detect their app running on jailbroken devices How does this work? I thought iOS apps are sandboxed to an extent where it shouldn't be possible to snoop around to determine which processes are running and such.

I assume you make a new mach-o file that hasn't been signed by apple and try to exec into it. If it runs, definitely jailbroken. Obviously a jailbroken phone could load a kernel module that detects this and stops it from running in this specific case, leading to a cat and mouse game between jailbreak developers and these apps. iBooks tried this once.

Re: Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

#53

Post by ladberg » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:45 AM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #39

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #3

Yay! I have fond memories of my friends (and eventually me, on the family iPad) jailbreaking our devices and doing stuff with them. A lot of the things I saw from jailbreaks were incorporated into later iOS updates- I'm curious (and excited!) to see what develops out of this wave.

What's the point now that we have Android?

So far, only iOS can run on iDevices, which means if you want to use Apple hardware you have to use iOS.

Re: Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

#54

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:45 AM UTC

cbluth wrote: post #50

baroffoos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade of corporate brainwashing has convinced people that only criminals want to control the device they own.

Most people don't own, they use payment plans

From a technical perspective, both users have (or lack) equal access to their hardware. So the actual method of ownership isn't really relevant.

Re: Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

#55

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:46 AM UTC

baroffoos wrote: post #35

js2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A jailbroken device allows apps to do things that a non-jailbroken device does not. I maintain my company's in-house mobile app crash reporting system and I had to remove jailbreak checks from our iOS SDK. It turned out that some of the checks were causing crashes themselves due to buggy anti-jailbreak-detection code some jailbroken devices had in place. e.g. checking whether a file could be accessed that normally iO…

The proper way of doing things should be that an app controls access to jailbreak features. By default nothing gets them and you can whitelist the ones which need it. I'm not sure if anything like this exists for ios but it should.

Depending on how much access you have, it's always possible for jailbreaks to hide their presence from applications (which are running at a lower privilege level). There are a couple of "jailbreak hider" implementations out there.

Re: Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

#56

Post by ladberg » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:47 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #30

dguido wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly will _feel_ persistent if you're successfully attacked with this technique. If your iOS software is swapped out for a version with a backdoor, then the attacker will have collected your passwords and authentication tokens to services you use. If you reboot to clear the backdoor (and let's be honest: no one reboots their phones), then you won't also "clear" your attacker's memory of all your passwords.

I reboot my phone once in a blue moon, but my phone reboots itself roughly every other day (usually because I space on charging it). Am I that unusual, or is "the phone is rarely going to reboot" not really a reliable predicate for attackers?

I similarly reboot my phone rarely, but my phone never runs out of battery. I never charge it during the day (except if I'm using it for GPS in my car), and it's just a routine to charge it at night. I don't think my current phone, which I've had for about a year, has ever run out of battery.

Re: Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

#57

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:48 AM UTC

nerdbaggy wrote: post #8

krackers wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>library to help developers detect their app running on jailbroken devices How does this work? I thought iOS apps are sandboxed to an extent where it shouldn't be possible to snoop around to determine which processes are running and such.

Couldn’t tell you, I know as much as that article says. But I’m guessing that’s part of their secret sauce

I'm sure it's some combination of checking for files that shouldn't be accessible or exist, searching your own address space for things that shouldn't be there, and verifying that kernel calls produce the results that they should.

Re: Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

#58

Post by jimmaswell » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:48 AM UTC

ladberg wrote: post #53

jimmaswell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point now that we have Android?

So far, only iOS can run on iDevices, which means if you want to use Apple hardware you have to use iOS.

I hardly see any compelling reason to stick to Apple hardware.

Re: Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

#59

Post by 14 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:49 AM UTC

cbluth wrote: post #50

baroffoos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade of corporate brainwashing has convinced people that only criminals want to control the device they own.

Most people don't own, they use payment plans

And if a person loses the phone one month into their payment plan they still have to pay for the entire price of the phone. So you take ownership the moment you make an agreement with the company to make payments.

Re: Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

#60

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:49 AM UTC

ladberg wrote: post #53

jimmaswell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point now that we have Android?

So far, only iOS can run on iDevices, which means if you want to use Apple hardware you have to use iOS.

Before this exploit there were other Bootrom exploits that allowed for running alternative operating systems (albeit on obsolete hardware).