Cydia Substrate

Cydia Substrate updated to v0.9.7103 with additional bug fixes

Following a Cydia Substrate update on Wednesday that improved hooking and added preliminary support for iOS 14, the package received a second update early Thursday morning, this time bringing it up to version 0.9.7103.

Cydia Substrate is used for tweak injection on both the checkra1n and unc0ver jailbreaks, albeit only up to A11 devices for the latter as Cydia Substrate doesn’t support A12 or newer handsets. If you’re using a supported platform, then this update is available from Sam Bingner’s default repository and should appear after refreshing your sources.

Cydia Substrate updated to v0.9.7102 with improved hooking & more

Depending on the type of jailbreak you’re using, your handset might depend on Cydia Substrate for tweak injection. This will be the case if you’re using checkra1n, but it may also apply to unc0ver users who aren’t using A12 or newer handsets since Cydia Substrate was never updated to support Apple’s latest lineup because of unforeseen complexity challenges.

If your jailbroken handset does use Cydia Substate for tweak injection, then you may want to launch Cydia and refresh your sources. An updated version of Cydia Substrate was released on Wednesday with improvements, officially bringing the package up to version 0.9.7102.

Critical bug fix for Substrate Safe Mode released for checkra1n and unc0ver users

If you’re using a modern jailbreak that uses Cydia Substrate as its primary means of tweak injection, be it checkra1n or unc0ver, then today might be a good time to fire up your preferred package manager and refresh your sources.

Substrate Safe Mode appears to have been updated to version 0.9.6003 with a critical bug fix. The checkra1n team shared the announcement in a Tweet delivered early Friday morning:

Saurik issues rare update for Cydia Substrate w/ iOS 13 support & critical bug fix

Saurik issued a rare official update for Cydia Substrate on Sunday, officially bringing the native tweak injection method for the checkra1n and unc0ver jailbreaks up to version 0.9.7100.

Although Saurik hasn’t made any official announcements on Twitter about the update, checkra1n and unc0ver co-developer Sam Bingner made a post on /r/jailbreak describing this new Cydia Substrate update.

Unc0ver jailbreak updated to v3.7.0 beta 4 with minor changes

Despite all the hype surrounding the checkra1n jailbreak in recent memory, hacker and unc0ver lead developer Pwn20wnd is reminding everyone that he’s still around with a new public beta release of his renowned iOS 11 and 12-centric jailbreak tool Monday evening.

Pwn20wnd didn’t share any status updates on Twitter about the new unc0ver public beta v3.7.0 beta 4, and perhaps unsurprisingly, that’s because this appears to be a relatively minor update dealing with Cydia and tweak injection methods.

Checkra1n public beta v0.9.2 incorporates bug fixes and ‘no substrate mode’

The checkra1n team silently updated the public beta of the brand-new checkra1n jailbreak tool to v0.9.2 Monday evening with a short list of improvements.

The latest update incorporates bug fixes and adds official support for 'no substrate mode' for troubleshooting jailbreak extensions in the event of crashes or respring loops. The full change log for checkra1n v0.9.2 is as follows:

CoolStar says Chimera and Electra jailbreaks will soon ditch Substitute for libsubstrate

Chimera Banner Image.

The Electra Team’s Chimera and Electra jailbreak tools have long utilized Substitute for native tweak injection, but it now seems that this could be on the verge of changing.

Electra Team lead developer CoolStar took to his jailbreak-oriented Discord channel on Thursday to share that his team would no longer maintain Substitute due to its incompatibility with certain jailbreak tweaks and hooking limitations:

Tweak injection teased on iOS 13 with upcoming checkra1n jailbreak

Things are getting particularly interesting in the world of jailbreaking since the official public release of @axi0mX’s checkm8 bootrom exploit for A5-A11 devices. One of the most intriguing work-in-progresses involving checkm8 has been checkra1n, a jailbreak tool spearheaded by renowned hacker Luca Todesco and others.

While we’ve witnessed quite a few teasers involving the checkra1n jailbreak to date, none have been quite as exciting as one shared just this morning. Jailbreak developer Sam Bingner, well-known for his popular TetherMe jailbreak tweak for enabling native Personal Hotspot on jailbroken handsets with or without carrier consent, teased the tweak functioning on iOS 13 by way of checkra1n:

Pwn20wnd says he’s almost done implementing Substitute support into unc0ver

If you have an iOS 12 device and you’re looking to jailbreak it, then you have two potential options at your disposal: Chimera by the Electra Team and unc0ver by Pwn20wnd. Both can jailbreak iOS 12.0-12.3 beta, but the latter is particularly limited on A12(X) devices because Cydia Substrate has not (and will not) be updated to work on them.

The Electra Team’s Chimera jailbreak works painlessly on A12(X) handsets because it uses an implementation of Substitute instead of Cydia Substrate. This was perhaps one of the single most compelling reasons to use Chimera at the time, but as you might recall, Pwn20wnd was working to implement Substitute into the unc0ver jailbreak, at least for A12(X) devices.

Pwn20wnd says Cydia works on iOS 13, but Substrate may require minor updates

Just yesterday, hacker and unc0ver jailbreak lead developer Pwn20wnd confirmed that both Cydia and Cydia Substrate would run without any turbulence on iOS 12.2. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the announcement led many to ask if the same would be true about Apple’s upcoming iOS 13 update, which is poised to drop sometime this Fall.

Pwn20wnd appeared to share this same curiosity, and so he deployed Cydia and Cydia Substrate on an emulated and pre-jailbroken installation of the iOS 13 beta to find out. The results of his test were announced on Twitter early this morning:

Pwn20wnd says Cydia and Cydia Substrate work fine on iOS 12.2

At the time of this writing, all publicly-available jailbreak tools only support up to iOS 12.1.2. But less than two weeks ago, a tfp0 exploit was achieved on iOS 12.2, raising hopes for the possibility of a jailbreak release for this particular firmware version.

To most of the jailbreak community, a full-fledged jailbreak is more than just root access to a device’s filesystem; most users also rely on a tried and true package manager to install their favorite extensions. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that renowned hackers like Pwn20wnd are currently playing around with Cydia compatibility on iOS 12.2, especially given the latest news.