For the record I don't agree with the actions evad3rs took, but I have a larger issue with your misleading article (https://blog.lookout.com/blog/2013/12/23/beware-geeks-bearing-gifts/).
Beware Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Latest iPhone Jailbreak is Actually a Trojan
"Taig's branding is all over the Chinese version of the jailbreak in fact, so it should've been clear what's happening." http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/1tha74/letter_to_the_community/ce80hpa?context=3
"In cases where it's actually installed, we do inform the user, of course." http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/1tha74/letter_to_the_community/ce80exj?context=3
Considering that the last jailbreak took nearly a year to develop
"nearly a year,", 136 days. Same difference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking#First_jailbreaks_by_device_and_iOS_version
"something that immensely frustrated many wannabe jailbreakers"
Editorial gripe; using a colloquialism isn't beneficial at all. "Something that immensely frustrated users awaiting a jailbreak."
Read on for our initial analysis of this jailbreak and why we consider it to be be a risky proposition.
Did you actually analyze the jailbreak (and jailbreak a device from both a US and Chinese computer), or was this article written using other other sites as sources?
However, this latest release from the evad3rs jailbreaking team is a significant departure **from their usual jailbreaks.**
evad3rs have only released two jailbreaks, evasi0n and evasi0n 7.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking#Recent_releases_of_jailbreaking_tools
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evasi0n
Unlike any of its predecessors, Evasi0n for iOS 7 includes hidden code from a third party Chinese vendor. Furthermore, that code has been heavily obfuscated in order to resist analysis and tampering.
The binaries are obfuscated for a similar reason to why we have in the past compiled in Cydia rather than including it as a separate file. We wish to secure the integrity of the jailbreak and discourage its use by third parties who may in fact wish to weaponize it. The obfuscation is of course not intended to deflect serious analysis by security professionals (who have quickly already fully analyzed and discussed the contents of the jailbreak), it is simply intended to prevent easy repackaging by other parties.
Source: http://evasi0n.com/l.html
https://blog.lookout.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/evasion.png
This isn't evad3rs, it's a group who profits off impersonation and confusion, and now you're lending credence to them.
Once the Taiji Market is installed it resists all attempts to remove it and disables other common jailbreak community markets including Cydia.
What's your source for this? Resisting "all attemptes to remove it" is a safety feature, one that Cydia (and the native App Store) has as well. If you delete your [jailbreak] app store, how will you install or manage apps?
From http://evasi0n.com/l.html
Users are not locked into Taig. Cydia can also be installed and Taig removed afterwards.
Presumably you've attempted to jailbreak an iOS device on a computer with a Chinese language set, and verified this behavior.
Furthermore, based on our analysis, people dependent on third-party Android markets face a higher risk of exposure to malware or pirated apps.
The only reason you even make this comparison is so you can plug your product and research. Which is fine, but even Google Play store has far more malware than the Apple App store.
- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-play-store-suffers-from-malware/
- http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/new-japanese-not-just-one-click-fraud-google-play
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/22/android_malware_badnews/
A jailbreak not only severs your ties to Apple, but it also disables the security defenses that have evolved over years to protect your phone against attacks. Without things like an application sandbox, any time a software vulnerability is exploited, your entire device is put at risk.
App Store apps are still sandboxed, and no ties with Apple are "severed."
At Lookout we recommend that only people who truly understand the risks of unlocking your device do so.
Jailbreaking and unlocking are two entirely different things.
Furthermore, we advise approaching this particular jailbreak with extreme caution due to the presence of potentially hostile chinese code embedded within.
"Chinese" is a proper noun.
iOS devices will automatically prevent unknown sources and protect against drive by downloads unless you jailbreak the device
While not entirely inaccurate, this is an alarmist statement. Nothing changes with a jailbroken device unless a userland exploit is used, or a malicious piece of software installed by the user facilitates drive-by downloads. Jailbreaking does allow the user to install software from non-Apple sources, but this is a conscious step on the users part. After the last userland exploit (used in Spirit), the jailbreak community released a patch to close the hole used by Spirit.