There’s a new iPhone jailbreak – and it’s significant. “This is possibly the biggest news in iOS jailbreak community history in years,” security researcher Axi0mX declared on Twitter, as the hacker posted a GitHub link to an unpatchable iOS exploit called Checkm8.
This new jailbreak that impacts all iOS devices running on A5 to A11 chipsets -- chips included in all Apple products released between 2011 and 2017, spanning eight generations of devices, from iPhone 4S to iPhone 8 and X.
The iOS jailbreak uses a new exploit named Checkm8 that exploits vulnerabilities in Apple's Bootrom (secure boot ROM) to grant phone owners full control over their device.
Axi0mX, the security researcher who published Checkm8 today, told ZDNet he'd worked on the jailbreak all year.
As its name suggests, jailbreaking gives people the ability to break iOS devices and strip them of restrictions Apple has placed on them. It has been a warranty-voiding practice, completed by general users and techies alike for years, but it has become notoriously hard to do in recent iterations of iOS.
Apple has since drastically improved its mobile operating system, giving some people the motivation, the customization elements, and app developers the API flexibility they needed to finally ditch the warranty-voiding process of jailbreaking and Cydia downloader. To put it simply, Apple is completely powerless to do anything about the exploit, short of recalling millions upon millions of affected devices. It’s one of the most significant exploits in recent years, potentially shaking the Apple ecosystem to its core. But does anyone really care about jailbreaking anymore?
<aside class="ad__main ad--article ad--article-rail ad--article-rail-top stick-wrapper stick-wrapper--fixed">Bootrom jailbreaks are very rare. They are the most highly sought after jailbreaks because they are permanent and can't be patched. Fixing any Bootrom vulnerability requires a silicon revision, meaning physical modifications to devise chipsets, something that no company can fix without callbacks or mass replacements. In effect, this is a permanent jailbreak that will work in perpetuity.
The last iOS Bootrom-based jailbreak was released way back in 2009, more than ten years ago, making the Checkm8 exploit even a more remarkable achievement since many thought the hardware avenue for rooting devices had long been closed. Ever since then, all iOS jailbreaks were software-based only, exploiting flaws in the operating system or its various components. Apple usually patched iOS within a few weeks, limiting the impact of all jailbreaks only to a shortlist of iOS versions, making rooting devices an ever more complicated task.
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