The jailbreak community has been on fire these past few months, with checkra1n delivering an un-patchable jailbreak experience for handsets ranging from the iPhone 5s to the iPhone X, and with unc0ver picking up support for iOS 12.4.1. But hey, why let the pwnage stop there?
Renowned hacker and iOS security researcher iBSparkes broke the silence this weekend after sharing a teaser of what appears to be successful tfp0 on a brand-new A13 device running iOS 13.3. Yes indeed folks, that’s both Apple’s latest hardware and software – pwned in one fell swoop. Not too shabby!
iBSparkes wasn’t specific about what type of A13 device he achieved tfp0 on, but this shouldn’t matter as the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max are each powered by the same silicon, which means they should all be susceptible. Notably, a tfp0 proof of concept was recently demonstrated on an A12 device running iOS 13.3 as well.
For those who don’t know, tfp0 is essentially a means of obtaining read and write rights in the kernel memory, which is something that Apple tries very hard to obfuscate. In doing so, jailbreaks can be produced, enabling system-wide customization since the operating system runs subordinate to the kernel.
It should be noted, however, that iBSparkes’ teaser only involves iOS 13.3, and Apple is currently testing iOS 13.3.1. With this in mind, Apple still has time to patch this vulnerability before iOS 13.3.1 is released, and it should be interesting to see whether this will be the case or not.
As for jailbreakability, this is particularly good news as Apple stopped signing iOS 13.2.3 last week, thwarting downgrades from iOS 13.3. If you’re already on iOS 13.3, then we’d suggest staying where you are to see if anything interesting comes out of this. If you’re on an earlier version of iOS, then you should avoid upgrading as history shows that older versions of iOS tend to be more susceptible to jailbreaking.
Given iBSparkes’ reputation in the jailbreak community, we’re excited to see what this could turn into if released. Then again, developing a jailbreak for an entirely new platform is an indescribable amount of work, and if anything did materialize from it, it would unquestionably take a lot of time.
Are you excited to see Apple’s latest hardware and software combo pwned? Discuss in the comments.