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The topic of jailbreaking was very popular and hotly debated a few years ago – but it declined over the years – at least until the summer of 2019.
In August of this year, a public jailbreak appeared under iOS 12.4, which briefly turned the iPhone world upside down. The reason for this surprising jailbreak was in the kernel at the time – it was not new for Apple. But Cupertino was able to close the gap within a week and only a few days later everything was back to normal. But this time it is different. We are talking about a newly discovered bootrom exploit that “Epic Jailbreak” This means that the error could enable a permanent jailbreak for all iPhones between 2011 and 2017 – from iPhone 4S to iPhone X. At least that is what a security researcher claims on Twitter. The gap called “checkkm8” would therefore not be lockable and could, with a little work, lead to a permanent jailbreak. Twitter user axi0mX writes:
"What I'm releasing today isn't a full jailbreak with Cydia, but rather a vulnerability. Researchers and developers can use it to offload SecureROM, decrypt keybags with the AES engine, and degrade the device to enable JTAG. You'll still need additional hardware and software to use JTAG."
In the course of the publication, the security researcher showed all the functions of the error and emphasized that it can only be triggered via USB. The exploit was GitHub with a warning that it may block devices completely:
"This tool is currently in beta and could potentially brick your device. It will attempt to save a copy of data in NOR in the nor-backups folder before flashing new data into NOR, and it will try not to overwrite critical data in NOR that your device needs to function. If something goes wrong, hopefully you can restore the latest IPSW in iTunes and bring your device back to life, or use nor-backups to restore NOR to its original state, but I can't make any guarantees."
Whether the exploit will ultimately result in a permanent jailbreak remains to be seen. Notice: Inexperienced users should avoid using such software – the consequences could be disastrous. (Photo by mkabakov / Bigstockphoto)
