Exclusive: Rumored 19-pin dock connector could prevent wired iOS jailbreaks
Last month, rumors of an updated dock connector for Apple’s iOS devices started making their way around the internet. I personally voiced my negative opinion about the change, and a lot of other journalists did, too. A smaller dock connector renders all previous accessories useless – not to mention that a smaller port is almost guaranteed to be more fragile.
But today, we got another piece of information about the new dock connector from someone familiar with the matter (who shall remain anonymous). According to this person, old accessories aren’t going to be the only things made incompatible: with the alleged new connector, jailbreaking with a cable will also be incompatible.
The new cables that utilize the new dock connector are said to contain chips inside – much like Apple’s current Thunderbolt cables – that will prevent unsigned code from being transferred to the iDevice.
From our tipster’s email:
“…OTA updates for all newer devices prevent jailbreaks from one angle, leaving only drive-by exploits and those done through cables. By putting chips in the cables, that closes the other end and from then on, only userland exploits will work and that those are quickly squashed through diags being sent to Apple.”
Unfortunately, Apple wouldn’t be breaking any rules with this alleged chip, either. Jailbreaking is completely legal, but Apple doesn’t want you to do it; as such, Apple “[sic]are within their legal right to make it difficult to do.”
Our tipster says that this technology has been seen before, albeit in a different form. Sometimes when you plug your iDevice into something, a dialog saying “This accessory is not made to work with iPhone” will pop up. The idea here is similar: you’ll plug your phone in and something that’s incompatible with your device simply won’t work. In this case, “something that’s incompatible” is your jailbreak.
At this point, it is just a rumor, but our tipster is quite informed. We’ll find out exactly what Apple’s planning to do with its new dock connectors and cables when the new iPhone is released sometime this fall.
Thanks, anonymous!
