Given just how easy it is to lose your jailbreak eligibility these days amid Apple’s rapid software updates, it goes without saying that jailbreakers should be cautious regarding the software they run on their handset(s).
A shady jailbreak tool for iOS 12.0-12.1.2 called Tw3lve ominously materialized from thin air on /r/jailbreak over the weekend, and the post was quickly removed by board moderation after it was discovered to be a blatant copy of Pwn20wnd’s open-source unc0ver jailbreak tool with a custom GUI behaving as smoke and mirrors to the general public.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tw3lve was released as a closed-source tool (otherwise it would have revealed the tool’s true nature upon release), but it didn’t take long for Pwn20wnd and other prominent jailbreak developers to reverse-engineer the disgraced jailbreak tool and learn that it was a copy and paste of an existing tool with a different face.
Update: Tw3lve project lead @Chr0nicT reached out to us to let us know that the old version of the jailbreak tool was pulled and that an open-source version is now being re-written with proprietary code. The source code will be available here.
Despite the apparent change of heart, we still don’t feel comfortable recommending Tw3lve to our readers because of its origins. That said, we suggest using Pwn20wnd’s unc0ver jailbreak tool instead, or at least practicing caution if you choose to do otherwise.
We have been asked ‘remove’ or ‘edit’ this article, and we’ve opted for the latter because we think our readers deserve to know about the tool’s history.
Pwn20wnd took to Twitter with these comments regarding the Tw3lve jailbreak tool early Sunday morning:
Armed with this new knowledge, we advise anyone who might’ve downloaded the Tw3lve jailbreak tool to delete it rather than deploying it. Running the tool may impose a risk to your device’s jailbreak eligibility in the future.
Instead, users should use Pwn20wnd’s unc0ver jailbreak tool if they intend to pwn their iOS 12.0-12.1.2 handsets. The jailbreak tool is tried and true and supports all devices apart from the A12(X) variety, something that Pwn20wnd intends to change soon when Cydia Substrate is officially updated with support for those devices.
The unc0ver jailbreak tool was updated just this weekend to version 3.0.0 beta 49 with fixes for all known bugs to date. Pwn20wnd says the tool will come out of beta after a full A12(X) jailbreak is achieved. As usual, you can download unc0ver from Pwn20wnd’s GitHub repository.
In the future, if something looks too good to be true, then it probably is. We’ll continue to monitor the situation and all future jailbreak tool releases to ensure our readers make informed decisions about the software they run.
How do you feel about the situation involving the Tw3lve jailbreak tool? Discuss in the comments section below.