iOS

FastUnlockX makes unlocking your iPhone X with Face ID even faster

Anyone sporting an iPhone X should be familiar with how Face ID works by now. After the handset recognizes your face, you’re required to swipe up from the bottom of the display to get to your Home screen. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could skip the second step altogether?

A new free jailbreak tweak dubbed FastUnlockX by iOS developer CPDigitalDarkroom brings this idea to fruition and makes unlocking your iPhone X with Face ID a split second faster.  

This tweak protects jailbroken devices from the Telugu character bug

If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, then you might’ve caught wind about a severe bug that crashes iPhones and iPads when a particular Telugu character gets sent or received in emails or text messages.

Apple plans to fix this bug in a future update for iOS, but firmware updates aren’t ideal for jailbreakers that depend on older firmware versions, and that’s where a new free jailbreak tweak called NotTodaySatan by iOS developer Zack Hankewycz comes in.

BioLockout lets you disable biometric authentication with an Activator gesture

Biometric authentication methods like Touch ID and Face ID come standard on most modern iPhones, and a new free jailbreak tweak called BioLockout by iOS developer ARX8x lets you take full control over when they can be used.

BioLockout takes advantage of Activator, so you can easily configure a gesture that toggles biometric authentication on or off on demand. You can set it up in the Settings app after installation:

Parts of iBoot and SecureROM source code from iOS 9 leaked online

Matrix code hacked iPhone.

Bits and pieces of iBoot and Bootrom (SecureROM) source code from an iOS 9 build have been leaked to the public for specific devices via GitHub, and this has the potential to spell out good news for the jailbreak community.

For those who don’t already know, these software components help ensure that the iOS devices we use each and every day boot up securely. Exploiting these components of iOS can yield permanent jailbreaks for supported devices, which underscores the significance of this leak.

Purported kernel-level exploit for iOS 11.2-11.2.1 won’t yield a jailbreak

Matrix code hacked iPhone.

Just a couple of days ago, security researcher Russ Cox made headlines after purportedly discovering a kernel-level exploit on iOS 11.2-11.2.1 devices. But as it seems, the ensuing excitement may have gotten a little bit out of hand.

Apple’s own security release notes for iOS 11.2.5 cited Cox’s bug as a means of executing arbitrary code on stock devices, but according to the researcher himself, it was nothing more than a memory corruption and Apple may have over-credited his finding.

Kernel exploit for iOS 11.2-11.2.1 surfaces

Security researcher Ian Beer made headlines last year after finding and releasing a tfp0 exploit for iOS 11.0-11.1.2, which powers jailbreak tools like Electra and LiberiOS, just to name a few. But now there’s a new kernel exploit in town, and it impacts later iterations of iOS.

Citing Apple’s security content web page, Tuesday’s iOS 11.2.5 update patches a kernel-level exploit discovered by security researcher Russ Cox, and it purportedly works on iOS 11.2-11.2.1.