It seems the joint creator of the iOS 9.3.5 Phœnix jailbreak has been busy filling up the remaining gaps in the jailbroken firmware listings. Following up on the Phœnix tool and an untether for the iOS 9.1-9.3.4 Home Depot jailbreak, tihmstar released an untethered 32-bit jailbreak for iOS 8.4.1 about a week ago. We refrained from recommending the initial release as it had a few issues, but it now seems ready for general consumption.
Whilst most are no doubt still eagerly awaiting a jailbreak for the just-released iOS 10.2, there are those who still have devices on various flavours of iOS 9 and older, who have fallen through the cracks of the most recent Pangu releases. For them, this week brought some hope, with two separate announcements of upcoming jailbreaking tools, in addition to the release of a browser-based tool from Luca Todesco. This round-up will cover the various pieces of jailbreak release news that came to light over the past few days.
Today's brisk activity has come to an end with the closure of the iOS 8.4.1 and iOS 9.0 signing window. This means that users can no longer upgrade or downgrade to iOS 8.4.1 or iOS 9.
This is big news, because an iOS 8.4.1 jailbreak has been rumored to be in the works. If you didn't heed our advice about updating or downgrading to iOS 8.4.1, then it's too late to do so now.
Over the last few hours, rumors have swirled on reddit and other places that we could see a jailbreak released for iOS 8.4.1. While I certainly can't vouch for the validity of these rumors, I am nonetheless intrigued by such a prospect.
Although the great new features found in iOS 9 would make it hard for me to personally backtrack to iOS 8, I understand that some of you would jump at the chance if it meant being able to jailbreak.
The good news is that if a jailbreak is released for iOS 8.4.1, everyone, at least as of this writing, can enjoy it. That's because Apple is still signing the iOS 8.4.1 firmware for all devices. When this will change is anyone's guess, but Apple usually closes its signing window for older firmware in relatively short order.
Pangu team member, windknown, has posted a report on the official Pangu blog outlining several vulnerabilities in iOS 8.4.1, the latest public iOS firmware for iPhones and iPads.
The writeup, entitled iOS 8.4.1 Kernel Vulnerabilities in AppleHDQGasGaugeControl, highlights three different bugs found in iOS 8.4.1: a stack overflow bug, an out-of-bound memory access bug, and a heap overflow bug.
I have to be honest, I didn't think we'd see a jailbreak for a long time after Apple fixed what seemed like a gazillion different security holes in iOS 8.4.1, but here we are. Just over a week after iOS 8.4.1 was released, the Pangu team showcased an iOS 8.4.1 jailbreak on an iPhone 6 at Friday's HackPwn2015 security conference.
We were hopeful, but as suspected, Apple was just a little late in getting the security details about the iOS 8.4.1 release out to the public. As it turns out, iOS 8.4.1 does indeed patch the TaiG jailbreak, as rumored for the last month. Needless to say, you should stay away from iOS 8.4.1 if you're at all interested in jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad.
Apple just released iOS 8.4.1 to the public. If you're jailbroken, it's highly recommended that you stay away from this update. We'll post an update once we have details of what the iOS 8.4.1 release contains, but rumors have swirled for weeks that it may fix the exploits used for the latest iOS 8.3 and iOS 8.4 jailbreak.
So far, we have not found any indication that this is so, but hold off just in case if you're interested in jailbreaking. If you're not interested in jailbreaking, feel free to update.
A little over two weeks after the iOS 8.4.1 beta debuted, Apple has seeded the second iOS 8.4.1 beta to developers.
The previous iOS 8.4.1 beta contained no release notes, but many speculated that the update would contain the usual bug fixes, and perhaps even a fix for the exploits used in the iOS 8.4 jailbreak.
We'll be sure to update you if there are any findings with regard to what the release contains. At this point, it's still up in the air, but the minor release version indicates that it likely contains no new front-facing features.
Apple just seeded iOS 8.4.1 beta 1 to members of its developer program. Seeing that this release is a minor version release, there's a good chance that it contains bug fixes, and perhaps even a fix for the exploits used in the iOS 8.3 and iOS 8.4 jailbreaks.
While details are currently scarce about what the update contains—there are no release notes at this time—we'll be sure to update you once we gather more info.
The iOS 8.4.1 beta 1 release comes in with a build number of 12H304, and is available for all devices capable of running iOS 8.4.