iOS 9 Jailbreak: When Will We See It?

Apple announced and unveiled the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus yesterday during its annual fall event, as well as provided a release date for iOS 9, which is set for September 16, but when will we see an iOS 9 jailbreak?

Apple patched up the iOS 8 jailbreak withs its iOS 8.4.1 update, which the company released last month. It’s a fairly minor update otherwise, coming with some basic bug fixes and some small performance improvements. However, the biggest change was the jailbreak patch for sure.

Things have been getting interesting, though, over the last few days. Pangu (the team behind the original iOS 8 jailbreak from late last year) recently showed off details about jailbreaking iOS 8.4.1, publicly detailing how they managed to crack the latest update and get into the system in order to jailbreak the latest version of iOS. It’s certainly a big win for the jailbreaking community, but it’s unlikely that a public release of an iOS 8.4.1 jailbreak will arrive anytime soon, if at all, especially with iOS 9 right around the corner.

That could be the case, as iOS 9 will release on September 16, and once it’s out and available, it’s likely that jailbreak developers will go right at work and get their hands dirty with the new version of iOS.

Case in point, well-known jailbreak developer iH8sn0w has successfully discovered an iOS 9 jailbreak, complete with untether, and even has a video to prove its legitimacy.

https://youtu.be/BtBqkj7RsFo

The video demonstrates the iOS 9 jailbreak in full, including verbose booting, custom boot logos, and code injection.

This is pretty exciting stuff and it goes to show that an iOS 9 jailbreak may not be too difficult to achieve after all, but what an iOS 9 jailbreak release date?

First off all, iH8sn0w will most likely not reveal his exploits and how he managed to jailbreak iOS 9, so it’ll still be up to Pangu or TaiG to get the job done. Furthermore, once an iOS 9 jailbreak is discovered, it’s likely that it may not release right away, considering that iOS 9.1 may be right around the corner at that point, which could release to the public next month or at some point in November. The iOS 9 jailbreak may wait until iOS 9.1 is released so that Apple doesn’t patch up the exploits in iOS 9.1.

Plus, we’ll have to wait for Cydia to update to support iOS 9 as well, which could take longer than the iOS 9 jailbreak itself. Both parts are developed separately and are not necessarily affiliated with one another.

While Pangu and TaiG are currently the biggest teams behind the latest jailbreaks, a report from back in June suggests that a new jailbreak team is working on an iOS 9 jailbreak.

They’re called the “Keen Team,” and if you’ve never heard of them before, that’s not surprising since they’ve never released a jailbreak, but they’re quite well-known in the hacking world. In fact, they exploited the iPhone’s Safari web browser at Mobile Pwn2Own competitions in 2013 and 2014.

Of course, not a lot of details about their progress is known, and it could be that they’ve figured as much out as other jailbreak teams working on an iOS 9 jailbreak, but at this point it’s essentially who comes out with an iOS 9 jailbreak first.

iOS 9 keeps the same overall look and feel as iOS 8, but comes with a few new features and improvements, including keyboard enhancements, a better Notes app, a new News app, transit directions in Apple Maps, and much better multi-tasking that allows you to do split-screens on the iPad.

iOS 9 will work on every iOS device that supported iOS 8, and this includes the iPhone 4s and the iPad 2, which are the two oldest devices that will support iOS 9.