Oliver Haslam·

Apple Watch watchOS 3 Jailbreak Def Con Presentation Video Released

You may remember that we told you a couple of weeks ago that the Apple Watch’s watchOS 3 had not only been jailbroken but had also been successfully demonstrated on-stage during the Def Con 25 conference.

That news was amazing enough, but we now have video of the presentation in which the magic happened, and it is an excellent way to spend 35 minutes.

The presentation, by Max Bazaliy, who is a researcher at Lookout and a founder of the Fried Apple team, runs for over 36 minutes and is a great watch for anyone who is interested in jailbreaking and how it is achieved. We see so many jailbreaks arrive for the iPhone that it can be easy to forget the work that goes into making these things possible, and with the Apple Watch now jailbroken, this is a fine opportunity to get some insight into what goes on behind the scenes.

This talk will provide an overview of Apple Watch and watchOS security mechanisms including codesign enforcement, sandboxing, memory protections and more. We will cover vulnerabilities and exploitation details and dive into the techniques used in creating an Apple Watch jailbreak. This will ultimately lead to a demonstration and explanation of jailbreaking an Apple Watch, showcasing how it can access important user data and applications.

Being able to jailbreak an Apple Watch is something new, and potentially gives people full and unfettered access to the device’s file system and any databases that reside within it. However, at the moment, Bazaliy says that the jailbreak is for purely research purposes, which means we should not expect to be using his work to jailbreak our own Apple Watches any time soon.

We have to wonder what kind of interest there would be in such a jailbreak even if it was released to the public.

(Source: DEFCONConference [YouTube])

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