SHAtter iOS 4.1 Jailbreak for Apple TV Possible in the Future; Probably When The Time Is Right

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Apple announced its next-generation Apple TV hobby at the beginning of September and the first units are now shipping. That also means that we can now confirm the Apple TV is running iOS 4.1, just as we suspected all along. So in the future we can expect various TV apps to arrive to future Apple TV hobby versions.

iOS 4.1 on Apple TV also means that those of you interested in doing so will be able to jailbreak the device as soon as the SHAtter-based jailbreak method becomes publicly available. The news comes all the way from MuscleNerd from the iPhone Dev Team:

It’s looking like SHAtter is going to be the gift that keeps on giving. Even though the new AppleTV isn’t yet in people’s homes, the firmware is available on Apple’s normal public distribution servers and SHAtter has been used to decrypt its keys! The main filesystem (“Mojave8M89.K66OS”) key for 018-8609-066.dmg is:

31c700a852f1877c88efc05bc5c63e8c7f081c4cb28d024ed7f9b0dbc98c7e1406e499c6

If you’re familiar with vfdecrypt, you can use that key to decrypt the image and mount it. If you do so, feel free to use the comments section to discuss what you discover there (And of course, thanks @pod2g!)

But what does Apple TV jailbreaking really mean? What will one be able to install on a jailbroken TV or to magically do with one such device?

The following advice is also pretty logical, if you want to jailbreak the device go ahead and buy a device right now, as Apple will have to fix this bootrom exploit by revising the hardware of the Apple TV, which means future machines, once SHAtter is out in the wild, might not be affected by this jailbreak.

But I feel compelled to ask you guys once again, why jailbreak the Apple TV? I mean sure, there are plenty of reasons to jailbreak the iPhone 4, iPod touch or iPad (not that we’re advising you to do it) but the Apple TV could be left untouched, at least for now.