#Failbreak 101

Initially there was something different planned for this post, it was going to be an exhaustive dissection of the latest #failbreak to help end-users become more discerning, and more difficult to target by the attention starved malcontent that may prey upon them.  Since the #failbreaker in question has outed himself with a fake application I’ve decided it’s not really worth the time to COMPLETELY deconstruct his videos with additional videos (i think the first one was enough, displayed above)

With that out of the way I am still going to give some notes on the videos and some screen caps to illustrate my points made in the video from yesterday. After that I am going to give some additional information on how to spot a faked video, I’m sure someone will point out in the near future the video attached to this post could “easily” be faked by a developer with enough talent, and time on their hands. However, in my opinion, that is an edge case, most people with that semi-unique skillset probably have much better things to do with their time than craft elaborate hoaxes. I believe the #failbreak demonstrated recently will be far more common, and that is the intended target of this post.

As a final note before I get into the core of this post, this is NOT meant to be “the definitive guide to making a real video” I think most of that has been covered exhaustively in the past, and this is just considered supplementary material to the current public body of work that exists for jailbreaking information.

four doctored screen shots are in the gallery below:

the first three  photos are the first clues of a fraud (the are in reverse order because wordpress is being a whore). with red lines drawn where the edge of the screen is, these screen shots are between 17-18 seconds of the first faked video notice the HUGE black section between the edge of the ipads screen and “cydias” interface

this was obviously covered near the end of the youtube #failbreak video included at the top of this post about the fake rotating screen shots. More hilarity ensues with the remainder of his video, suffice it to say that after he shows the exterior to prove its an iPad2 (without locking rotation, which would’ve help obscured his ruse) its magically at [redacted] (ed note: i refuse to give mention to that vile program on this blog), while he is trying to prove that he is scrolling at precisely 38 seconds the photo album interface flashes up with 1/3 on it (i think those are the numbers, very blurry). Anyhow I don’t think we need to go much further dissecting this pathetic excuse for a #failbreak video, suffice it to say in the remainder of the video he NEVER scrolls in [redacted] and if you look closely the word “Crystal” is ALWAYS the first word of the last visible paragraph of the “application”.

Since I said I was not going to exhaustively dissect the video, and I still kind of did, his second video is only going to get a listed summary:

1. his [redacted] picture displays the SAME application as the first video, guess he doesn’t need anything else!!

2. we already had sufficient proof that most of the time he was actually using an iPad2, and most of video 2 was just using apps like Photo Booth and FaceTime. and

3. he faked the first one, why would the second miraculously be real?

Some additional things to consider when trying to discern a real jailbreak video (these aren’t organized and are off the top of my head, so I apologize if I miss any obvious ones)

1. If its claiming to be an untethered video, an unobscured un-doctored display of the iDevice restarting and running a specialized Cydia app (or displaying a custom theme of some sort with winterboard, or maybe SBSettings) right off the bat, without being plugged in to a computer at ANY point. Then there is ZERO proof of said exploit being untethered.

2. This point is partially mentioned in 1 but deserves further elaboration to fully understand. The reason the video above could still be faked is it only shows simplified applications that could be faked by any developer with enough talent and enough time to waste being a fraud. Had I shown Cydia installing something and then running said app/tweak (preferably something that tweaks Springboard like SBSettings, much harder to fake) The only thing that lends further credibility to my video above (aside from the fact that I’m not a lying douchebag, and I don’t have a track record for deceit) is the greenpois0n skull in my slider lock screen. Of course this could probably be staged too, but the effort involved would just be stupid.

As mentioned before that topic has been covered pretty exhaustively in the past, and I have no desire to re-invent the wheel. This is by no means a definitive post on how to make a genuine video, just a starting quick primer on how to easily discard an obvious fake.

This last part is going to be entirely in bold so people actually read it before commenting. The iPad 2 jailbreak illustrated in the video included in this post is incomplete, slightly unstable (depending on what you install) and is injected in a fashion that could never be distributed legally (you are NOT getting any more detail there, I don’t care how many people ask, or how many times they ask, sorry).

Re: instability, For instance, if mobile substrate is installed and you accidently reboot, theres a chance your iPad 2 isn’t coming back without a restore, I say there is a chance because I vaguely remember someone else with the jailbreak relaying that information, and I’m not dumb enough to verify it. Not worth the risk.

EDIT: This video is real, this jailbreak is real. However, by the standards set prior in the jailbreaking community this video would not pass them. In my opinion those standards are ridiculously anal retentive to the nth degree (to encompass edge cases, and extremely elaborate hoaxes) and my STATED GOAL was NOT to make a “how to” proof video, I didn’t go out of my way to satisfy anyone elses standards. Frankly, I don’t care if people believe the veracity of my video or the claims, I’m going out of my way to provide information on how to spot hoaxes, so I could care less who does or doesn’t believe my iPad 2 is jailbroken.

EDIT2: We have confirmation from @chronic that installing mobile substrate and then rebooting will in fact require a restore. thanks for the confirmation!

Tags: failbreak, greenpois0n, ipad 2, ipad 2 jailbreak, ipad2, jailbreak fraud, jailbreaking

Category: General, Greenpois0n, How To: