Apple Equips iBooks With Anti-Jailbreaking Measures

It looks like Apple is getting a bit more serious with the back and forth antics between it and the jailbreak community.

The latest casualty in the hacking war is iBooks, or more accurately, people that use iBooks.

Basically Apple has implemented anti-jailbreak measures in iBooks, and I have to admit, it’s kind of sneaky the way they pulled it off.

How’d they do it? Check inside for the video evidence…

Slyly, Apple has equipped iBooks with a procedure that attempts to run unsigned code. Bear in mind that this is the type of code that will only execute on a jailbroken iPhone.

Hence, if the code successfully runs, iBooks knows your iPhone is jailbroken, and sends you a nice little dialogue prompting you to restore your iPhone back to factory settings!

If it doesn’t run, then iBooks knows you’re working with a stock iPhone, and lets you open your book.

Keep in mind that these are all books that you legitimately purchased. It’s very annoying that I can’t read a book that I shelled out my hard earned money for just because I’ve jailbroken my iPhone.

But that’s another topic for another day; the point is, Apple looks to be continuing its efforts to discourage jailbreaking.

Something tells me the inability to read a book on a 3.5″ screen isn’t going to thwart the plans of the jailbreak community.

For the record, I’ve actually noticed this happening periodically ever since updating to iOS 4.0. No doubt all jailbreak tools will contain workarounds for this issue in the near future.

What are your thoughts on this ongoing saga?

[TUAW]