Although the jailbreaking community within the iOS ecosystem might have argued that jailbreaking was mainstream before this month’s release of Evasi0n – the first jailbreaking software for the iPhone 5 and iOS 6.1 – Evasi0n is certainly sparking a wave of jailbreaking the likes of which Apple has never seen.
On Friday, Forbes reported that Apple has been “hit with the largest mass-hacking incident in its history.”
iOS jailbreaking refers to the process of removing the limitations on Apple devices running the iOS operating system through the use of software and hardware exploits.
According to Forbes writer Andy Greenberg, Evasi0n has now been used by close to seven million iDevice owners since the eagerly-anticipated tool was finally released.
Cydia – the app store for jailbroken devices – has already been visited by 5.15 million iPhones, 1.35 million iPads, and 400,000 iPod touches jailbroken with evasi0n.
Although the most recent jailbreak took almost 6 months to prepare, Greenberg says there’s reason to believe that the next jailbreak won’t take as long.
“Apple is no doubt scrambling to patch the bugs that evasi0n has taken advantage of,” Greenberg writes, but “the evad3rs say they’ve got nearly another full jailbreak worth of research that they’re keeping in reserve for the next iPhone.”
