(Image and video courtesy of The Dev-Team Blog)
With the second-generation Apple TV now in the hands of most early buyers, the pieces of the jailbreak puzzle are finally falling into place as the pending SHAtter exploit has now been unleashed on the new device.
The Dev-Team Blog has updated their earlier post showing a fourth-generation iPod touch running the new SHAtter exploit, which has now been ported to the new second-generation Apple TV that landed in the hands of customers this week. The exploit has not been released to the public as yet, but promises to jailbreak all iOS-based devices, potentially for life.
“It’s confirmed,” The Dev-Team writes on their blog. “SHAtter can trick Apple’s new AppleTV 2G into restoring to a pre-jailbroken IPSW from PwnageTool too! Literally the only UI application on the ATV is Lowtide.app, but now the window is open for jailbroken apps of all varieties. (Just like the early iPhone days, the only apps you’ll see on the AppleTV will be jailbroken ones).”
If you’re not familiar with jailbreaking, it’s essentially a way to enable writing to an Apple device, particularly with the intent of running apps or mods that might otherwise not get approved by Apple. PwnageTool has long been one of the best ways to create custom firmware, combining Apple’s iOS with hacker tools which are then used to restore an iDevice via iTunes.
As we told you about earlier this week, the “LowTide” app that The Dev-Team refers to is the Front Row-based user interface you see running on the new Apple TV when you boot it up, providing the various menus for the device. That app has already been ported over to an iPod touch as part of the ongoing effort to hack the new ATV.
Right now, having SHAtter running on the Apple TV doesn’t mean much since no apps have been written or modified to run on the device, but it’s a first step toward further coolness to come. The Dev-Team have kindly provided the embedded YouTube video below, showing root access into the ATV box via SSH which ends with showing that the box has indeed been SHAttered.
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