Why doesn't Apple prevent iPhone jailbreaking by encrypting iOS and installing it on an independent chip?

Question

With this I mean iOS will be encrypted with AES or any other very strong encryption algorith to prevent jailbreaking. It would also have its own storage chip, where the OS is installed. Any attempt to access this OS chip would result in the OS being deleted and the iPhone being useless if attempted. Only certified apple technicians could then fix your iPhone.

So why doesn't Apple do it to prevent jailbreaking?

I'm upvoting this question because in my opinion it's a good question to ask, even if the answer is obvious to many of us. — Mark Buffalo, Oct 20 '17 at 20:55
they actually already do something like what you describe, just not the _whole_ OS... — dandavis, Oct 21 '17 at 08:17

Steffen Ullrich · Answer 1 · 2017-10-20T20:37:00.880

4

...very strong encryption to prevent jailbreaking...

Encryption does not magically prevent jailbreaking (the same way HTTPS does not magically make some website secure). Jailbreaks use bugs in the operating system to escalate their privileges to a system user. This way they can write to the system the same way as other high privileged system processes can do, no matter if encryption is used or not.

edited Oct 20 '17 at 20:37

answered Oct 20 '17 at 18:43

Steffen Ullrich

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 20 '17 at 18:51

Jailbreaking is a way to gain access to the smartphone kernel (the most important part of any operating system, used by all applications) and enable some functionalities.

Encryption can be used to prevent someone from reading/using data without a key. Since the kernel must be used by any app, if you encrypt it either 1)no app could use it and your smartphone wouldn't work, or 2)any app could read it and modify it.

That's why Apple (or anyone else) cannot just use encryption to prevent jailbreaking.

Why doesn't Apple prevent iPhone jailbreaking by encrypting iOS and installing it on an independent chip?

2 Answers2