It seems that the parts of the source code of Apple’s iOS 9 have leaked via github. They might have been removed from there, while you are reading this, but probably they will be passed around in the internet anyway.
Some sources say that this is a risk to security. It might be, but in the end cryptography specialists tend to consider the availability of the source code as an advantage for security, because it can be analyzed by everyone, vulnerabilities can be found and published and of course more easily be corrected if the source is available to everyone. Hiding the source code is some kind of „security by obfuscation“, which is not really a strong mechanism and it should be based on verifiable secure mechanisms, as successfully applied by Linux and other open source operating systems. But this might not be fully true, if the sources are just passed around in somewhat closed circles and not easily available to the general public.
This does not make iOS open source, because the licenses that Apple imposes on their software are still valid and to my understanding they do not make this part of the system open source, which means much more than just being able to read the source code of a certain version that might already be outdated. Please observe that if the source code that you might find on github is really coming from Apple, their original license and not the one mentioned in github applies.
To put Jail breaking somewhere near security breaches is wrong, because this is an action done by the owner of the device with his or her own device at own risk. This should be everyone’s right to do so and there should be nothing wrong with making it easier. I know, we are not living in a perfect world…
So please relax. If Apple has done a good job, there will not be too bad exploits and if they are still doing a good job, they will quickly fix any exploits that show up. And if you like to have an open source system, you should still consider using something else.
Links
- Macworld
- iPhone source code leak? Apple cracks down on ‚iOS bootloader‘ posted on GitHub
- Apple’s iBoot Source Code for iPhone Leaked on Github
- Key iPhone Source Code Gets Posted Online in ‚Biggest Leak in History‘
- A possible copy on github (at the time of this writing 2018-02-08)
- search github for iboot
- iPhone Source Code From iOS 9 Leaked on Github
- NZZ (German)
