{"id":36927,"date":"2014-07-25T12:01:23","date_gmt":"2014-07-25T19:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.mcafee.com\/?p=36927"},"modified":"2025-08-07T22:23:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T05:23:01","slug":"ios-jailbreaking-source-hacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mcafee.com\/blogs\/mobile-security\/ios-jailbreaking-source-hacked\/","title":{"rendered":"More Reasons to Not Jailbreak Your Phone: App Repositories Get Hacked"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the world of mobile security there are two types of smartphone users: jailbreakers<\/a>, and everyone else. Everyone else is fairly harmless. They enjoy their smartphones as they are, and, for the most part, lead fairly secure mobile lives. The same, however, cannot be said for jailbreakers\u2014especially after one of the largest jailbreaking repositories for the iOS ecosystem was hacked.<\/p>\n

(And, yes, the iOS ecosystem is hackable<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Jailbreakers, for the uninitiated, are those who use special software to remove limitations imposed by Apple on devices running the iOS operating system. This allows them to gain root access to the operating system to be able to install apps obtained through means other than the official App Store. It can also allow them to use their mobile device on an alternate carrier\u2019s network than the one on which the phone was initially issued.<\/p>\n

There are, however, drawbacks to jailbreaking an iPhone. For one, your iPhone\u2019s warranty is typically voided as soon as it\u2019s jailbroken; for another, your iPhone\u2019s software can become buggy and unreliable; finally, the chance of downloading malware<\/a>\u2014malicious programs hackers use to compromise devices\u2014jumps precipitously after jailbreaking a phone.<\/p>\n

That last point brings us back to the incident<\/a> at hand: one of the jailbreaking community\u2019s biggest third-party app repositories, BigBoss, has been hacked. All of the software in the repository\u2014some of which requires payment through services like PayPal\u2014is being given away for free on a hacker-created server.<\/p>\n

But free may carry an asterisk with it. The hackers responsible for the breach may have \u201cupdated\u201d their stolen goods with malware. Worse still is the possibility that the apps hosted on the original BigBoss repository could have been updated with malware as well. That should put many jailbreakers on edge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the risk jailbreakers run when modifying their iPhones for capabilities beyond what Apple intentionally sold.<\/p>\n

What to Do and Not to Do<\/h2>\n

So what\u2019s a casual jailbreaker to do in this case? Well, there are a few options:<\/p>\n