So if you’ve been following along in the jailbreak community for the past year, then you’ve undoubtedly heard about the kernel file descriptor (kfd) exploit, which supported iOS & iPadOS versions 16.0-16.5 & 16.6 beta 1, as well as iOS & iPadOS 15.0-15.7.6.
Just over the New Year weekend, however, the kfd exploit appeared to pick up support for newer firmware with the new puaf_landa method, which exploits CVE-2023-41974 and was patched in iOS & iPadOS 16.7. The latest method is published to GitHub by felix-pb and is a big deal for various reasons that we’ll break down for you below.
Citing a post shared to X (formerly Twitter) by Dopamine jailbreak and TrollStore perma-signing utility lead developer Lars Fröder (@opa334dev), today’s news means that the kfd exploit can now officially be made to support all versions of iOS & iPadOS 16 available today.
Worthy of note, this means that a TrollStore installation method will be coming to iOS & iPadOS 16.5.1, 16.6, and 16.6.1 soon, however no ETA has been provided for obvious reasons. TrollStore installation methods for newer versions of iOS & iPadOS 16, as well as iOS & iPadOS 17.0, have yet to be discovered, so it remains to be seen exactly how long an installation method for those versions might take.
Already, Misaka co-developer Huy Nguyen (@Little_34306) has confirmed that they are working to add a puaf_landa TrollStore installation method to the Misaka package manager app, which will complement the existing kfd exploit-based installer for iOS & iPadOS 16.0-16.5 & 16.6 beta 1 by adding iOS & iPadOS 16.5.1, 16.6, and 16.6.1 support.
All of this also means that the PPL bypass provided in the “KTRR bypass” presentation at the 37c3 conference by the Kaspersky GReAT team will soon be able to be used to jailbreak arm64e devices running iOS & iPadOS 16.5.1 and below instead of only iOS & iPadOS 16.5 and below. So paired with the TrollStore insights above, this is great news all around for anyone who may have been running iOS or iPadOS 16.5.1 and thought they missed their shot.
There is currently no ETA for a jailbreak to be created for arm64e devices running iOS & iPadOS 16.0-16.5.1, but at least the community has reassurances that a newer jailbreak will be worked on once all the documentation becomes available.
Furthermore, to get a jailbreak for arm64e devices running iOS & iPadOS 16.6 and newer, the jailbreak community will need another (newer) PPL bypass since the “KTRR bypass” Kaspersky discussed turned out to be so convoluted that it was realistically just a PPL bypass for iOS & iPadOS 16.5.1 and below.
In any case, this is excellent news to start off the new year. Given all the treats that the jailbreak community received in 2023 and what appears to be coming, the 2024 year should be an interesting one for jailbreaking to say the least.
Are you excited to see what becomes of the updated kfd exploit method? Be sure to let us know in the comments section down below.