The Evasi0n team unexpectedly released its iOS 7 jailbreak over the weekend, accompanied by controversy, allegations of bad faith and, for some users, the unannounced inclusion of a Chinese app store that apparently contained pirated iOS apps.
Rumors flying across Twitter and on Reddit accused evad3rs, the team behind Evasi0n7, of taking money from TaiG, the Chinese app store in question. Additionally, prominent members of the jailbreak community were apparently blindsided by the weekend release of the Evasi0n jailbreak, including Jay Freeman (@saurik), creator of the Cydia app store for jailbroken iPhones and iPads.
Evad3rs, the team responsible for the jailbreak, released a statement expressing regret about the presence of pirated apps on TaiG and pledging that the Chinese app store would be pulled from the jailbreak if the piracy problem couldn’t be “resolved.” In a subsequent tweet, iOS security researcher and Evad3rs member Cyril Cattiaux (@pod2G) wrote that default installation of TaiG had been disabled pending further investigation.
The Evad3rs statement, however, acknowledged that the team had a financial interest in its jailbreak:
Yes, we have benefitted financially from our work, just as many others in the jailbreak community have, including tweak developers, repo owners, etc. Any jailbreak from us will always be free to the users but we believe we have a right to be compensated in an ethical way, just as any other developer.
While there are questions surrounding the jailbreak’s release, it is still available for download, albeit with reported bugs. It requires Windows, Mac OSX or Linux.
It might, however, be prudent to hold off using Evasi0n7 until some of the dust clears. This Reddit thread provides up-to-date information from the jailbreak community with input from developers heard through Reddit and Twitter.
