Also appearing was Mark Dowd, founder of Azimuth Security, who has done extensive analysis of the iPhone's "kernel," the term for the core code of an operating system.

On Wednesday, Dowd and his colleague Tarjei Mandt successfully installed Cydia, an app store for unauthorized iPhone applications, on an iOS6 device using a kernel-mode exploit. They didn't use a method that could be applicable for the jailbreaking effort, however: Azimuth used its own custom-designed debugging application installed on an iPhone to deliver the kernel exploit, Dowd said.

Overall, Dowd and Mandt concluded that Apple has mitigated many weaknesses with iOS6, which makes its kernel much harder to exploit.

"All the previous techniques that have been used have basically been made for the most part useless," Dowd said. "But there's still room to move and its still possible to exploit the kernel in iOS6, but the bar has definitely been raised."

But all are attracted to the challenge.