iOS 16.1.2

Ian Beer’s MacDirtyCow bug PoC reveals it’s more powerful than originally thought

iPhone hacked matrix.

By now you’ve probably heard about the MacDirtyCow bug for iOS & iPadOS 16.0-16.1.2. Shortly after Google Project Zero security researcher Ian Beer reported CVE-2022-46689 to Apple late last year, security researcher Zhowei Zhang created a rough draft of a bug that developers now actively exploit to make operating system modifications that ordinarily wouldn’t be possible without jailbreaking.

MacDirtyCow bug grants advanced system customization, such as changing fonts, on iOS 15.x-16.1.2 without a jailbreak

Different fonts applied to an iPhone with the MacDirtyCow bug.

A bug affecting iOS & iPadOS versions 15.x-16.1.2 and macOS 13.0.1 called CVE-2022-46689, also codenamed MacDirtyCow, has been making headlines recently. This bug was discovered by security researcher Ian Beer of Google Project Zero, and while it’s not being used in any jailbreaks, it does appear to be at the epicenter of some interesting hacks for modding iPhones and iPads recently, such as TrollLock Reborn.