Jailbreakers Enlist Users to Help to Find iOS 5 Jailbreak

Still waiting for that iOS 5 jailbreak? You’re not the only one. It hasn’t happened yet because Apple did a pretty fantastic job of patching up iOS 5 exploits, and without exploits, there can be no jailbreaks. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t exploits to be found, and so the jailbreak team wants to know when your iPhone or iPhone app crashes. Read on …

Remember when you checked the box in iTunes directing it to send iPhone diagnostic information to Apple? Well, according to the Chronic Dev Team blog, the group wants you to stop giving that information to Apple and give it to them instead. Makes sense, right? Just download and install the Chronic Dev Team’s iTunes hijacking app, which will automatically intercept and send your crash data to the development team instead of sending it to Apple for examination. The hope is that with enough exploit and crash data, a fully functional and untethered iOS 5 jailbreak will emerge.

While a handful of exploits already have been found,  jailbreakers haven’t pushed out so much as a beta because …

It’s really quite brilliant. Using crowdsourcing and Apple’s own model against itself, jailbreakers can once again return to doing what they do best — opening your iPhone up to all sorts of weird, wonderful and verböten apps and customizations. How soon until we see a jailbreak arrive is another question altogether, but if users trust the jailbreak team, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t download the iTunes hijacking application and go to town.

Is there a trust issue here? Yes, naturally. But if you’re already knee-deep in the world of the jailbreak community, you should know you can trust these guys. They often patch the exploit they used to jailbreak after the jailbreak is completed. Your anonymous diagnostic information should be technically less of a privacy issue than jailbreaking your iPhone.