watchOS 4

Developer behind ‘Brenbreak’ Apple Watch jailbreak teases SSH capabilities

iPhones and iPads have been jailbreakable for more than a decade, but the Apple Watch doesn’t quite seem to receive as much attention as those handsets in the pwnage department. For that reason, a work-in-progress Apple Watch-centric jailbreak dubbed ‘Brenbreak’ by @ethanpepro has been particularly intriguing, to say the least.

The mastermind behind the Brenbreak Apple Watch jailbreak has been sharing regular updates via Twitter since April, and with one of the most recent updates indicating a Q4 2019 public release, it should come as no surprise to anyone that @ethanpepro shared yet another momentous milestone just last night:

An Apple Watch jailbreak for watchOS 4.0-5.1.2 is purportedly in the works

The concept of jailbreaking the Apple Watch isn’t particularly new, and while there’ve been a handful of attempts to make an official Apple Watch jailbreak, most of those efforts were for proof of concept or developer tinkering purposes only. Fortunately, that could change in the future.

A handful of Tweets shared by @ethanpepro over the last couple of weeks denote what appears to be preliminary progress on the backbone of a jailbreak tool for Series 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 Apple Watches running watchOS versions 4.0-5.1.2, and perhaps even watchOS 3.

watchOS 4.3 release notes

On March 29, 2018, Apple released the watchOS 4.3 software update for Apple Watch. Among other improvements and fixes, watchOS 4.3 reinstates the ability to browse music on your paired iPhone via your wrist while enabling new features like portrait Nightstand mode.

watchOS 4.2 release notes

On December 5, 2017, Apple released the watchOS 4.2 software update, bringing the new Apple Pay Cash peer-to-peer payment feature to your wrist and adding other new capabilities.