For years the Cydia Store was a key component of the iPhone jailbreak scene — jailbreaking an iPhone or iPad gives you access to files, settings, and features that would otherwise be unavailable, but the Cydia Store makes it easy to find and install apps that take advantage of those features.
But the Cydia Store has basically been maintained by one person — Jay Freeman, also known online by his nickname “Saurik.” And this weekend he announced that he’s shut off the ability for users to buy apps from the Cydia Store.
The move comes in response to the disclosure of a major security vulnerability — but Saurik says he was planning to shut down the Cydia Store entirely by the end of the year anyway.
To be clear — users can still download free apps from Cydia, and folks who’ve already paid for apps/tweaks can continue to download them.
What’s gone is the ability to pay for items in the Cydia Store. That’s due to a vulnerability that opened the door for malware to cause logged-in-users to make unauthorized purchases using PayPal. No user data was compromised, but it was still a pretty serious bug — and a complicated one to fix. The person who discovered the bug recommends users unlink their PayPal accounts from the Cydia Store.
Saurik says one reason he had been planning to shut down the Cydia Store by the end of 2018 was that it was difficult and expensive to maintain, and didn’t bring in even enough revenue to cover the store’s hosting fees — he’s currently paying for the costs of serving “many terabytes of bandwidth per month” out of his own pocket.
it’d be nice if Cydia hadn’t bought out and shut down Rock, the only other major competing app store for jailbreak tweaks
Personally, I moved on from Apple ecosystem as a whole. I am still reqired to use an iPhone IF I want to access my work email when outside the office but I only do so if the device is provided by the company, not myself and I pretty much use it only for that.
I only owned iPhone 4 and I quickly switched to android. Having recently had to deal with using an iPhone, I don’t regret the switch the least bit.
I gave up jailbreaking when those that did the jailbreaking couldn’t keep up with finding a way to break Apple’s new ios releases and I wasn’t willing to stay on an ios version that was outdated and vulnerable just for a few tweaks and visual changes. Was fun while it lasted, but I’ve moved on. I bought a good amount of apps through Cydia, so I feel like I supported Jay ( Saurik ) over the years.
Maybe Jay’s just feeling the pressure.
The hosting money isn’t an issue, there are many people who will donate to keep it alive, and that included non-Cydia users. Just one KickStarter and he’ll likely have enough cash to keep it running for a decade.
The issue is to keep prodding for bugs, making updates and keeping up with new iOS Versions.
Also check each and every Cydia-App to make sure they don’t have glaring faults (device bricking, data stealing, etc etc). And then somehow after all that, making sure you don’t get sued by users and you don’t get sued by Apple. It’s quite understandable he’d want to exit.
Still, this is a big blow to the enthusiast community.
It would be nice for alternate app stores for apple. Especially with their 30% cut. I hope the app store monopoly lawsuit goes through.