Saurik has announced that effective immediately the Cydia Store has been shut down.
The Cydia Store opened on March 7, 2009. It provided a way for developers to sell their tweaks and apps to users with jailbroken devices. The very first package for sale was Cyntact, an app that showed profile pics in your contact list. The app cost $1.00 to purchase.
Unfortunately, as Apple added more features to iOS, the popularity of jailbreaking declined. At the same time it became harder to jailbreak iOS so public jailbreaks were fewer and far between. Less traffic means maintaining the store now costs more than it brings in. Saurik planned to shut it down by the end of the year but a recently discovered bug has moved up that timeline.
Developer Andrew Wiik described the problem on Twitter:
"The issue was regarding the ability for arbitrary depiction pages to make unconsented cydia store purchases if the user was logged into their cydia store account and chose to link their paypal info to the their account."
In a post on reddit, saurik addressed the bug and announced the store's shutdown:
Given the push from Nullpixel and Andy Wiik to do something about it this morning (which isn't a problem: I think people think I was saying this to shift "blame" to them? I had to say this to explain why I am doing this now, but I was going to do this anyway next week... I don't even personally believe in "responsible disclosure", but I do believe in the importance to avoid confusion; the bug was serious, and affected people actively logged in to Cydia: it is stupid of specifically me that I have made such a massive error in the Cydia Store backend), I've had to reconsider my timelines; I have thereby gone ahead and shut down the ability to buy things in Cydia, effective immediately. I will put together a more formal post about the arc of Cydia, likely to be published next week.
It's definitely sad for us to say goodbye to the Cydia Store. We're incredibly thankful to saurik and all the developers that contributed to the store over the years. We'll let you know when saurik posts his recap next week. For now, let us know what you think about the shutdown in the comments. Will you miss the Cydia Store?
iChild, Jailbreaking is dead, not because there’s no interest in jailbreaking, but because Apple changed their long term policy and began PAYING jail breakers for their exploits, shutting them down before users have the opportunity to up/downgrade to the specific iOS version.
If you’re lucky enough to personally know the jailbreaker in question, then good for you, but such ‘early notification’ doesn’t apply to anyone else. Jailbreaks thrived because they were ONCE open to everyone. If it’s now just a private club, who personally profit from exploits which effect EVERYONE, then I’d rather have NO jailbreaks at all.
The same jailbreakers who earn a million a pop from Apple, can easily turn around and sell the same exploits to police departments across the globe, in addition to thousands of repressive governments, meaning that YOUR free ride is coming out of OUR personal freedom!
And companies can learn from their mistakes and bounce back from even the lowest points in their time, plus maybe someday their can be a new cydia or maybe we can get an Apple CEO willing to do this without the sacrifice of security. You never know.
I’m sorry but you really didn’t know how to use those tweaks by jb. There was so many additional features added to your phone.
Now Apple will simply activate the auto-pilot and will be more sloppy at patching holes in the iOS
Software Innovation will slow down also
And companies can learn from their mistakes and bounce back from even the lowest points in their time, plus maybe someday their can be a new cydia or maybe we can get an Apple CEO willing to do this without the sacrifice of security. You never know.
Can you at least still download or install your previously bought stuff? I still want it to be available, ill go start downloading debs if I have to but somebody plz let me know lol.
I used to be a regular jailbreaker ever since 2008, currently on stock iOS 12 and most happy about it. Staying locked on iOS 12.1 just in case.
No doubt the JB community has been shrinking to barely there numbers, but they manage to stay around nonetheless.
Good luck to Saurik and all parties involved, hope they can reinvent themselves to keep on biting the Apple 🍏 😁👌
The big problem was that Apple switched from pretending that jailbreaks weren’t significant, to paying hackers substantially more than they could earn to turn the hacks over to Apple. That nailed the coffin shut on jailbreaking.
I’ve been wanting to jailbreak for some time, but the jail breakers have kept their releases to themselves, telling their friends which versions were ‘safe’ to upgrade to, leaving the rest of us out in the cold. If that’s their strategy, I’m all for criminalizing searching for vulnerabilities.
If they’re only in it for themselves, NO ONE will defend t or support them.
Based on what the article says, glad we don't have to worry about the cost of losing security anymore at least and enjoy what we nowadays get out of the box.
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