New iPad Jailbroken By Three Different Methods

Just hours after the new iPad had become available to the public, hackers started reporting successful routing of Apple’s latest iOS.

Musclenerd and i0n1c of the iPhone Dev Team produced the first two Jailbreak hacks last Friday, with phoenixdev (Paul Griffen) and chpwn (Grant Paul) offering another method on Saturday.

Jailhouse rock

Jailbreaking is the process of bypassing constrictions imposed by Apple on iOS by gaining root access to the operating system. It allows users to download additional apps, extensions and themes that are unavailable through the official Apple App Store.

The practice is legal in the US (as an exemption under Digital Millennium Copyright Act), although Apple has announced that jailbreaking “can violate the warranty”. In the UK, the situation is less clear, due to absence of a test case in court. “You’re allowed to jailbreak your iPad for ‘interoperability’ reasons. You’re allowed to put non-Apple programmes on your iPad. But steer clear from pirate software – it wouldn’t be considered legal to load stolen/pirated software onto your shiny iPad,” clarifies realbusiness.co.uk.

The first to produce a working hack was Musclenerd, a member of the iPhone Dev Team (unaffiliated with Apple). On Friday, he tweeted a screenshot of root access to the new iPad and evidence of his tablet running the unofficial Cydia Store.

His hack was followed by the announcement of a successful and technically very different jailbreak by teammate i0n1c, who released a YouTube video as evidence of his accomplishment.

Finally, another hacking team, consisting of Paul Griffen (@phoenixdev) and Grant Paul (@chpwn), posted screenshots of their hacked third-generation iPads on Saturday.

It seems it is now only a matter of time before a downloadable jailbreak is available to the public.

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