If you’re using iOS or iPadOS 14 right now, then your only means of jailbreaking would be with the checkra1n jailbreak on older A7-A11-equipped handsets up to and including the iPhone X.
Fortunately, the tides may change in the relatively near future as a newly released kernel level local privilege escalation (LPE) dubbed cicuta_virosa looks particularly promising for all handsets capable of running iOS or iPadOS 12.0-14.3.
It was only a couple of days ago that security researcher Ian Beer shared a rather interesting kernel vulnerability for A11 and older devices (iPhone X and older) running iOS 14.1 and lower. But such a feat begs the question: what about A12 and newer devices?
Fortunately for those who’ve been asking this question, there could be a light at the end of the tunnel. Security researcher @pattern_F_ of Ant Security Lab demonstrated what appears to be a successful jailbreak attempt on an iPhone 11 running iOS 14.0
Ian Beer is a name much of the jailbreak community will recognize, and that’s because he’s a talented security researcher who discovered and published a plethora of different tfp0 exploits over the years — many of which went on to further jailbreak tool development.
Although Beer has been somewhat quiet these past several months, it seems it was for a good reason, as the hacker took to Twitter Thursday afternoon after publishing details for what appears to be a kernel vulnerability impacting iOS & iPadOS 14.1 and below.
Most iOS & iPadOS 13 jailbreakers are using either checkra1n, Odyssey, or unc0ver to enjoy an unrestricted handset without Apple virtue signaling how their user experience should be, but there could well be a new jailbreak in town very soon.
iOS developer Kritanta, known and respected for releasing a slew of high-quality jailbreak tweaks over the past few years, took to Twitter this afternoon to tease what could only be described as the very early stages of an upcoming jailbreak tool.
If you rely on a slide-loadable jailbreak such as Odyssey (iOS 13.0-13.7) or unc0ver (iOS 11, 12, and 13.0-13.5), then it can be devastating if your device suddenly reboots because of a dead battery or a glitch. When this happens, you’ll be without your jailbreak and any add-ons you installed until you can re-jailbreak again.
Sadly, with many signing service certificates being revoked left and right without notice and with AltStore suddenly not working for apps installed after January 28th, it almost seems like using these jailbreaks puts you right in the crossroads of frustration and unreliability. But perhaps it doesn’t need to.
The checkra1n jailbreak tool is renowned for its use of a powerful bootrom exploit called checkm8, which can’t be patched by Apple via a software update because the exploit exists in the hardware of devices equipped with A7-A11 processors.
The checkra1n team initially released the checkra1n jailbreak as a macOS-only application in 2019, and it wasn’t until a good bit into 2020 that the tool picked up support for Linux. As for Windows, the checkra1n team planned to support it, but to this day hasn’t implemented official support in a public release. So what’s the hold up, exactly?
It’s not unheard of to see checkra1n team member Luca Todesco Tweeting about some sort of jaw-dropping hacking achievement. Todesco has shown time and time again that he wields magnificent hacking talents, and as of this evening, he appears to be at it again.
In a series of Tweets shared Saturday, Todesco teased multiple photographs of what appears to be pongoOS running on one of Apple’s brand-new M1 chip-equipped Macs.
The checkra1n jailbreak utilizes such a powerful exploit that it offers a whole lot more than just a package manager and instant access to your favorite jailbreak tweaks. In fact, the hardware-based checkm8 bootrom exploit has proven more than capable of enabling a whole host of interesting hacks on compatible devices.
The latest of such hacks comes by way of Twitter user @RowRocka, who on Monday afternoon Tweeted a YouTube video of Ubuntu version 20.04 running on an iPhone 7 that had been pwned with the checkra1n jailbreak tool.
While many of us are gathering with small circles of close friends and family to usher in the incoming 2021 year this New Year’s Eve, the checkra1n team appears to have different plans.
Earlier this evening, the checkra1n team took to Twitter to announce that the checkra1n jailbreak tool has been updated to version 0.12.2 with a small number of changes, although notable ones nevertheless.
iOS security researchers who applied for Apple's Security Research Device Program, announced in June, are reporting that Apple has finally started shipping specially-configured iPhones.
Earlier this year, iOS developer XsF1re garnered a substantial amount of attention from the jailbreak community after releasing the FlyJB kernel-level jailbreak detection bypassafter releasing the FlyJB kernel-level jailbreak detection bypass — a tool that was basically meant to amount to a way for jailbreakers to go undetected by App Store apps that would traditionally bar access to those with pwned handsets.
Soon after, XsF1re pulled the project, citing a loss of confidence, but later reinstated it as FlyJB X upon developing improvements to make the bypass more reliable. Still, it wasn’t without its shortcomings. Over the weekend, however, iOS developer Ichitaso updated his own kernel-level jailbreak detection bypass dubbed KernBypass (unofficial) to version 0.0.5, and from what we can gather, it just might be slightly superior.
About a month ago, Guardian Firewall VPN founder and CEO Will Strafach, a former member of the Chronic Dev Team, shared a particularly exciting announcement in that nitoTV (now going by @freenitoTV on Twitter) had gotten VPN connections working on the Apple TV platform for the very first time; albeit with a jailbreak.
The aforementioned jaw-dropping feat demanded tons of complicated hackery, but after lots of research, development, testing, and refinement, the project, officially dubbed “vpnd,” is now available for jailbreakers who might want to try their hand at configuring a VPN connection on their own Apple TV.