Jailbreak Protection on iOS

Layering on client-side security

Back in my university days, I was part of RAG—the society based around raising and giving money to charitable causes.

They had an annual event called Jailbreak, where teams compete to get as far away from London as possible in 48 hours, usually being sponsored per mile. The optimal strategy was to hang around at an airport looking attractive and hope someone offered you cash to fly somewhere.

I attempted to start a Jailbreak team with my RAG acquaintances, Brielle Daniels (B.D.) and Sam Miller (S.M.). In my teenaged bravado, I was convinced we’d be able to make it to Iraq. I had my mum ready to sponsor. I had my dazzling boyish charm to deploy at the airport. I had the perfect team name that utilised everyone’s initials. But it wasn’t to be.

Therefore, Jacob’s adventure with BDSM never happened.

Jailbreaking on iOS is a different beast entirely (you’ll never get the last 30 seconds back).

Jailbreaking exploits security vulnerabilities in iOS to escalate privileges and break out of the end-user sandbox in which Apple allows you to play.

This was extremely popular in the good ol’ days of iOS, allowing users to:

• Install third-party app stores which circumvent Apple’s review process.

• Unlock mobile network carrier restrictions.

• Customise wallpapers, icons, and even gestures on the device.

• Pirate paid apps (as an iOS dev I can’t condone this. Stick to movies).

That’s right—it pretty much turned your iPhone into an Android.

Beyond piracy, there’s a darker side to the swashbuckling world of jailbreak. They make it trivial to install runtime debugging tools like Frida which can read your application memory, steal bundled API keys, and exploit security holes in your apps.

Today we’re going to learn how you can build jailbreak protection into your apps.