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Jailbreak tweaks of the week: BigSnooze, iBlockX, Tenmetsu, & more…

The jailbreak community is in a perpetual state of anticipation as we wait for the checkra1n team to expand support for newer devices and for recent exploit developments to be released such that other jailbreak teams may take advantage of them in their tools. That aside, jailbreak tweak releases continue, and that’s why this piece exists.

In this roundup, we’ll talk about all the latest jailbreak tweaks released between Monday, November 9th and Sunday, November 15th. As you might come to expect, we’ll start by discussing our favorite releases first and then we’ll wrap things up with an outline of everything else afterward.

Security researcher Liang Chen demos jailbreak on iPhone 12 Pro running iOS 14.2

The past few weeks have been crazy for anyone heavily invested in the jailbreak community. Not only was the checkra1n jailbreak updated to add support for A10(X) devices and iOS 14.1-14.2, but a new exploit PoC targeting iOS & iPadOS 13.x was released and FreeTheSandbox once again affirmed that a jailbreak with support for iOS & iPadOS 13.5-13.7 would be released in the near future without a definitive ETA.

But the community was in for yet another teaser this week after talented security researcher Liang Chen (@chenliang0817) of Singular Security Lab (@SingularSecLab) demonstrated a working jailbreak on Apple’s brand-new iPhone 12 Pro handset running iOS 14.2 — the latest publicly available firmware at the time of this writing:

iBlockX offers jailbreakers deeper control over incoming notifications than Do Not Disturb

With iOS’ Do Not Disturb feature, you can effortlessly silence all incoming notifications that bombard your iPhone with the flip of a switch. Unfortunately, Do Not Disturb is a bit of an all-or-nothing solution. While you can individually silence contacts in the Messages app as an alternative, this doesn’t quite offer enough control if you use lots of third-party apps to keep in touch with friends and family.

iBlockX is a newly released jailbreak tweak by iOS developers Greg0109 and MeBlackHat that strives to solve the aforementioned dilemma. It does so by handing users a smorgasbord of options for silencing calls and other notifications on a per-contact basis and for several different apps spanning user-configured time-frames whether those apps come preinstalled by Apple or not.

FreeTheSandbox discusses its plan for iOS 13.x jailbreak release, no ETA

Those eagerly waiting for a jailbreak with support for the concluding versions of the iOS & iPadOS 13 family before Apple officially released iOS & iPadOS 14 this Fall have two options, with the first being to wait for FreeTheSandbox to release the jailbreak they’ve been teasing for more than a month, or the second being to continue waiting for someone to pick up an exploit like the one just recently released by @_simo36.

If the FreeTheSandbox offering sounds like a better choice to you, then we’ve got some news for you. The official FreeTheSandbox Twitter account shared the following Tweet early Thursday morning to comment on the state of the jailbreak they’ve been working on:

PerfectSpotify lets jailbreakers augment the Spotify app’s user interface

Those who swear by Spotify can come up with an endless list of reasons as to why it’s a better music streaming platform than Apple Music, but despite what Spotify fans tell you, there are still a myriad of different ways that the Spotify app itself could be improved.

PerfectSpotify is a newly released and free jailbreak tweak created by iOS developer Luki120 that permits any Spotify user wielding a jailbroken handset to augment their Spotify app with various customizations of their choosing, whether that means enabling a better song library interface, hiding unwanted elements of the user interface, or something else.

Tenmetsu makes the iPhone’s rear-facing flash more like a pro flashlight

In addition to being a phone and an internet communications device, the iPhone could be described as a digital multitool. A great example is the handset’s rear-facing LED flash, which doubles as a flashlight when we find ourselves stranded in the dark.

Out of the box, a stock iPhone supports use of the aforementioned LED flash as a flashlight via the Lock Screen Quick Action button or the dedicated Control Center module. Users may also adjust the LED brightness in steps if they wish. Unlike a lot of flashlights on the market today, however, the iPhone’s LED flash seems lackluster in the feature department. That’s where a new jailbreak tweak dubbed Tenmetsu by iOS developer Plat-Ykor comes into play.

Exploit PoC targeting up to iOS 13.7 released

Matrix code hacked iPhone.

If you’ve been paying any attention to the iOS & iPadOS security research side of things recently, then you might’ve caught wind about a kernel bug discovered by Mohamed Ghannam (@_simo36) that held the capacity to pwn iOS & iPadOS 14.1 and below. Unfortunately, Ghannam later revealed that the bug didn’t work on iOS or iPadOS 14, and instead that it would only support variants of iOS & iPadOS 13.

While the aforementioned circumstances were indeed a bummer for those who’d been looking forward to a potential exploit release for iOS & iPadOS 14, the good news is that Ghannam officially released a kernel exploit proof of concept (PoC) dubbed 'OOB Events' on Wednesday with instructions for achieving kernel task port (tfp0) on iOS & iPadOS 13.7:

The best free reference apps for your iPhone and iPad

Dictionary.com Word of the Day on iPhone

If there’s a handy spot to have references at your fingertips, it’s your iPhone or iPad. Physical books still hold a place in many people’s hearts but no one walks around with dictionaries, encyclopedias, and phone books nowadays.

So if you’re in the market for good references for school or work, you’ll like this list of the best free reference apps for iPhone and iPad.