The Apple iPad has been jailbroken, within hours of its US launch, according to a notorious US iPhone hacker.
iPhone Dev-Team member MuscleNerd revealed this weekend that he managed to jailbreak the new iPad after it had only been on store shelves for one day.
The crack is a variation on the "Spirit" jailbreak used to de-restrict iPhone 3.1.3 and is believed to use a browser-based exploit to get root access to the iPad.
Which basically means you can run unsigned apps run on the tablet. Apple has not yet responded to the news, nor is the company likely to, publicly at least. Though we are sure they already have teams of lawyers looking into the issue.
Automated hack on the way?
While a video demo of the hack has been posted on YouTube already it is not yet clear how soon this could be made into an easily automated process for non-techies. Though again, we imagine that is just a matter of time.
"A jailbreak was virtually expected following the iPad's launch, but the rapid discovery has shown that the iPhone 3.2 firmware used on the device hasn't patched all of the security holes that were present in the 3.1.3 code," notes iPadhacks.org.
"Most jailbreaks to date have used vulnerabilities either in Safari or the OS itself to grant unrestricted access. The combination of the risk to users and Apple's own general discouragement of jailbreaking has led to many of these jailbreaks being rendered inert over time with firmware updates."
