Hacker catches Apple's Lightning in a jailbroken bottle

All iThings reportedly open to colossal customisation

Apple's Lightning connector protocols have been pried open in what could be a boon for the jailbreaking community.

The hack opens access to Apple's serial kernel debugger, previously available on older iDevices, and reportedly gives jailbreak engineers an improved ability to debug kernel issues and iBoot exploits.

Apple jailbreak site iDownloadblog reported iOS hacks were previously developed on older 30-pin iDevices and with the new hack could be developed directly on Lightning-equipped kit.

A chap known as @key2fr detailed on the website Ramtin-Amin.fr how they hacked and built a connector for the units.

The coder identified that Apple uses the Tristar chip to connect Lightning UART, baseband and JTAG, information that was contrary to previous thought, and promised to build a batch of the Lightning debug cables next week. If the cables eventuate, they'll come in handy for engineers currently unable to acquire official C10C serial connectors under Apple's MFi program.

How much of the hackers' work was unique, as opposed to a composition of purchased Chinese hardware and the probing of a protocol through a logic analyser, is up for debate, however, it had excited many prominent figures in the jailbreaking community.

Tool box HackADay said it was the "first step" to "totally owning an iDevice".

"This is the key to the castle, and being able to get through this chip means we can now own our iDevices," it reported.

The hacker has uploaded a proof of concept video demonstrating the hack. And there it is down there at the bottom of this story. ®