Apple has Blocked Saurik’s SHSH Servers [Update]

We’ve all been watching as the fight between Apple and jailbreakers heats up.
What started as a cat and mouse game has become more of a battle. Apple has certainly become more aggressive in the fight during the last few months.
For starters, they recently implemented ASLR as a security measure to thwart hackers. They have also blocked Cydia access from inside their retail stores, and pressured Toyota into removing their advertisements from the jailbreak community. What’s their latest move?
Chpwn announced via Twitter today that Apple has blocked Saurik’s SHSH servers. For those who aren’t familiar with SHSH blobs, they are necessary if you ever wanted to downgrade your iOS firmware.
Saurik had innovated a way to cache SHSH blobs for Cydia users. A simple file edit meant that users wouldn’t have to constantly remember to save their SHSH blobs with 3rd party software.
Well it seems Apple has blocked access to their gs.apple.com server, which Saurik’s SHSH servers needed to function properly. Chpwn does mention that currently saved SHSH blobs are fine and usable, but moving forward users should find a different method.
The fix is simple here. Those of you that have been using TinyUmbrella or iSHSHit can continue to do so. Chpwn also mentions that a “Submit my SHSH” could be on the way to Cydia to allow blobs to be saved locally and then uploaded to Cydia from the device.
Although this isn’t devastating news for most of us, it does send the message that Apple is taking jailbreaking a little more seriously. It’ll be interesting to see how Apple addresses jailbreaking both publicly and in iOS in the coming months.
What do you think?
UPDATE: It seems that Saurik noticed all the attention his downed SHSH servers were getting and decided to chime in. A few moments ago he tweeted that the server issue of saving new blobs was due to a code snafu, and not to Apple intervention.