The iPhone 5 on iOS 6 firmware may have been jailbroken, but the method isn’t available to the public yet. Likewise, not too long ago we observed iPhone Dev Team successfully jailbreaking the new iPad mini within 24 hours.
The iPad mini and iPhone 5 jailbreak was possible through Apple Developer account, which costs $99 per year. From the tweet sent out by @Musclenerd, iOS 6 wasn’t jailbroken but failbroken. If you remember, @Planetbeing stated in his tweet: “Upgraded the #failbreak with a kernel exploit so tweaks actually work on iPhone 5.”
Failbreak? Sounds more like jailbreak, right? Up until now we have used the word jailbreak interchangeably with failbreak, but there’s a difference between the two. Failbreak is a new word for us to mull over and it will probably be used a lot more in the future. So what’s the difference between jailbreak and failbreak?
First, about jailbreak. Jailbreaking is all about exploiting Apple’s iOS. Consider it as a key that can unlock every room of the hotel. Jailbreaking gives users the access to root files which are otherwise hidden, possibility to customize screen, and do a great deal of changes to our iOS devices.
Remember that jailbreaking process involves a lot of work: there are security checkpoints that needs to be bypassed or patched, signed files that must be deceived, and many other checks to be escaped from the vigilant eyes of Apple. For more, read this article on how jailbreaking works.
Failbreak, on the other hand, is also a kind jailbreak. The only difference between the two is that failbreak requires Apple’s Developer account. Jailbreak doesn’t require any account.
Jailbreaking is free. Failbreak is, well, not free — the method to failbreak is not available for everyone yet, and we don’t think iOS hackers will expose the method anytime soon.
We are not entirely sure why the iOS hackers coined the term failbreak, but it certainly helps.
The brilliant minds are, as we would like to believe, always going to release jailbreak for future iOS devices. A successful failbreak only proves that iOS (and the device) is exploitable.
