Get ready for a blast from the past; only, this is actual news in 2023. When we received a tip email about a new iPhone 4 jailbreak coming out, our staff looked at it cross-eyed for a moment, but we quickly realized that it was a serious tip.
Gala is a new jailbreak tool made specifically for the iPhone 4 running iOS 4 by iOS developer Phillip Tennen, the same talented developer who brought us popular jailbreak tweaks in the past such as Velox 2, Acute, Epicentre, and TokeTime, just to name a few.
While jailbreaks certainly already exist for this device and firmware combination, the developer claims that gala has a ‘special sauce’ that those jailbreaks don’t have, which includes a six-part series that describes what it’s like to build a jailbreak and the many challenges that come up as you do.
Tennen tells us that the series provides interactive visualizations at every step of exploiting the device from pulling memory dumps from the bootrom to debugging a flashed filesystem image. This in-depth technical information is exactly what a prospective jailbreak developer would want to know to get started with making jailbreaks, and this is why this information is both valuable and important.
In addition to being a jailbreak with some documentation, Tennen says that gala includes:
- A significant Python application
- A Cocoa GUI for end users
- A Rust payload
- Cocoa Touch games to play within the boot environment while the jailbreak completes
- C utilities that run on-device
While very few people are still using an iPhone 4 today, lots of collectors still have one for situations just like this where someone comes out years later with a hack that makes it more capable.
Tennen acknowledges this fact, but appears to have made gala for the sole purpose of learning and sharing what he learned with the world — something that is important to pass on to the next generation of jailbreakers who might hope to keep passing the torch.
Those interested can not only read the write-up, but view the jailbreak’s code. The entire thing is published on axleos.com via the URL below:
https://axleos.com/exploiting-the-iphone-4-part-1-gaining-entry/
What are your thoughts about Tennen’s most recent work? Let us know in the comments section down below.