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Jailbreak not entirely removed after restore?

F

foranor

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 10, 2009
111
0
So, I have found something that confuses me.

Everyone keeps saying that doing a restore removes the jailbreak, making a jailbreak undetectable.

That seems to only be partially true.

I had 3.1.2 jailbroken and used LockDown-App to protect mail/sms and the like with another, if tiny protection so I could hand out my phone knowing not everyone could read my mail and stuff.

However, that eventually also caused me to have to restore and when I realized there's a JB for 3.1.3 (spirit), I decided: What the heck.

I restored to 3.1.3 and because my backup was corrupt, had to set up as new.

I jailbroke with spirit and haven't installed LockDown again, because it kept crashing on me.

Today I SSH'd into my phone and to my surprise, I found remnants of the LockDown App still being there, directories and files.

So, unless there's something else I should have done before or while restoring, the simple act of restoring as new does NOT seem to entirely remove all traces of a jailbreak.

In theory, Apple could jailbreak allegedly bricked phones and so find traces of previous jailbreaking. Cause for concern?
 
foranor said:
So, I have found something that confuses me.

Everyone keeps saying that doing a restore removes the jailbreak, making a jailbreak undetectable.

That seems to only be partially true.

I had 3.1.2 jailbroken and used LockDown-App to protect mail/sms and the like with another, if tiny protection so I could hand out my phone knowing not everyone could read my mail and stuff.

However, that eventually also caused me to have to restore and when I realized there's a JB for 3.1.3 (spirit), I decided: What the heck.

I restored to 3.1.3 and because my backup was corrupt, had to set up as new.

I jailbroke with spirit and haven't installed LockDown again, because it kept crashing on me.

Today I SSH'd into my phone and to my surprise, I found remnants of the LockDown App still being there, directories and files.

So, unless there's something else I should have done before or while restoring, the simple act of restoring as new does NOT seem to entirely remove all traces of a jailbreak.

In theory, Apple could jailbreak allegedly bricked phones and so find traces of previous jailbreaking. Cause for concern?
Click to expand...

Usually when you restore the iPhone and set it up as a new device it removes the jailbreak. I know from restoring from backup there has been some information still on it but havent seen it once setting up as a new device.
 
iPhone3Gusr said:
Usually when you restore the iPhone and set it up as a new device it removes the jailbreak. I know from restoring from backup there has been some information still on it but havent seen it once setting up as a new device.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm saying though. It did remove the jailbreak, but after re-jailbreaking 3.1.3. with spirit, I found pre-restore files on the phone.
I thought, restoring removes all that without any evidence of a jailbreak whatsoever remaining.
So when people say, Apple has no way of finding out, that is only half right. I'll quote myself..
myself said:
In theory, Apple could jailbreak allegedly bricked phones and so find traces of previous jailbreaking.
Click to expand...
 
Files do remain after a jailbreak, kinda.

Here is what happens, like any other application, there are, let's call them data files, that are written to your phone. These files are used by the application (or setting modifier) but are USELESS without the application that created them. These files are backed-up by iTunes the same way that any other data file is backed up. So, if you restore your phone, they will be erased, but if you restore a back-up the files come back.

As long as you do not restore a back up, your iPhone will have no evidence that it used to be jailbroken.
 
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