Talented hacker and software developer Jake James took the jailbreak community by surprise this weekend after releasing rootlessJB 3.0, a developer-focused rootless jailbreak tool for A9, A10, and A11 devices running iOS 12.0-12.1.2.
James announced the release of rootlessJB 3.0 via Twitter on Saturday, perhaps unsurprisingly stirring up quite of a bit of attention among his following:
This isn’t your standard jailbreak tool like Electra or unc0ver, as it doesn’t require a remount and it doesn’t install or support customary package managers like Cydia or Sileo. Instead, tweaking your device would depend on SSH, a means of remotely accessing a device’s filesystem over a network connection.
We can gather from James’ Tweet that rootlessJB 3.0 does not yet support jailbreak tweaks or code injection in the initial release, but it appears that this could change in a future iteration. Another of James’ Tweets claimed that tweaks won’t need any kind of codesign patch or trustcaching when support is officially added, as you can sign them with a certificate instead:
At the time of this writing, A7, A8, and A12 devices aren’t supported by rootlessJB 3.0. A12 support will allegedly come in a future iteration, as James is working out some kinks in that department. On the other hand, A7 and A8 devices won’t be supported unless a compatible exploit gets released.
To be clear, rootlessJB 3.0 isn’t intended for everyone, and unless you’re a developer, you should probably steer clear and keep waiting until standard jailbreak tool gets released for iOS 12. That aside, it’s still fascinating to see what talented individuals can do with all these iOS-centric exploits as of late.
Those curious about the rootlessJB 3.0 project can learn more about it by visiting Jake James’ GitHub repository. You can also follow Jake James on Twitter to receive regular updates about the project.