4 ms·

this will always be true of jailbreaks as they fundamentally break the security of the device. this means that it can be used for cool things like shown in the

this will always be true of jailbreaks as they fundamentally break the security of the device. this means that it can be used for cool things like shown in the article but it could also be used maliciously by an attacker to completely take over the device which the manufacturer should definitely patch.

hnlmorg 3y ago
these exploits are never closed for the security of their users, though the changelogs might often claim that’s the case. It’s always about licensing costs for the manufacturer. Every game or application released for consoles (and phones alike) have to pay a licensing fee to the maintainers of that platform to publish on that platform. If you can jailbreak the device then you can publish software to that device without paying Sony, Apple or whoever else. The security aspect is just a convenient side effect from locking people in. But if it was only security that these manufacturers were concerned about then they’d have found a way to allow people to tinker with their hardware without needing to crack any security mechanisms in the first place. You can see this concern for licensing being a big thing in consoles as early as the Gameboy and MegaDrive (Genesis). And back then security wasn’t even a concern.
brokenmachine 3y ago
After the last update to my expensive DSLR broke third-party batteries for no reason beyond pettiness and greed, at this point I trust random hackers more than I trust Sony. *the battery ruining was not mentioned in the changelog for the update.
extraduder_ire 3y ago
It's a shame that such exploits are needed in the first place, when allowing developer mode to be toggled like a normal android device (ideally easier than on an xbox/quest) would be enough for most of these cool things. It's also a strangely perverse incentive to stay on an exploitable firmware if you want to hack your own hardware.

hnlmorg 3y ago

these exploits are never closed for the security of their users, though the changelogs might often claim that’s the case. It’s always about licensing costs for the manufacturer. Every game or application released for consoles (and phones alike) have to pay a licensing fee to the maintainers of that platform to publish on that platform. If you can jailbreak the device then you can publish software to that device without paying Sony, Apple or whoever else. The security aspect is just a convenient side effect from locking people in. But if it was only security that these manufacturers were concerned about then they’d have found a way to allow people to tinker with their hardware without needing to crack any security mechanisms in the first place. You can see this concern for licensing being a big thing in consoles as early as the Gameboy and MegaDrive (Genesis). And back then security wasn’t even a concern.

brokenmachine 3y ago

After the last update to my expensive DSLR broke third-party batteries for no reason beyond pettiness and greed, at this point I trust random hackers more than I trust Sony. *the battery ruining was not mentioned in the changelog for the update.

extraduder_ire 3y ago

It's a shame that such exploits are needed in the first place, when allowing developer mode to be toggled like a normal android device (ideally easier than on an xbox/quest) would be enough for most of these cool things. It's also a strangely perverse incentive to stay on an exploitable firmware if you want to hack your own hardware.