The jailbreak community is always running at least a version or two behind Apple on iOS, but now a hardware vulnerability is enabling an iOS 13.1.2 jailbreak that can’t be patched by Apple. The catch is that it only works on older devices using the A5 through A11 chips. This year’s iPhones use A12 chips, which means the exploit will only work the iPhone X, 8 and 8 Plus and earlier.
Checkm8 exploit enables iOS 13.1.2 jailbreak
The iOS 13.1.2 jailbreak is made possible through the hardware-based checkm8 exploit, which was revealed last month. Since checkm8 exploits a vulnerability in the hardware, Apple can’t patch it with a software update, unlike most vulnerabilities. Apple is constantly battling jailbreakers and trying to keep them from freeing their devices from iOS, so a hardware vulnerability is a major setback for the company’s efforts.
The fact that the exploit is hardware-based also means that all devices with an A5 through A11 chip can be jailbroken, no matter which version of iOS users are running. Thus, it allows for an iOS 13.1.2 jailbreak, even though that is the latest version of iOS.
Public release may be coming soon
Jailbreak developer axi0mX showed off his checkra1n jailbreak in a tweet, adding that it will be coming soon. That probably means a full public release is coming soon, but there is no way of knowing that for sure, or when the public release might arrive.
#checkra1n with #checkm8 #eta #son
??? pic.twitter.com/2g6QuK9CoC
— axi0mX (@axi0mX) October 10, 2019
Earlier this week, qwertyoruiop also showed off a demo of an iOS 13.1.2 jailbreak running on an iPhone SE and an iOS 12.4 jailbreak running on an iPhone X. His jailbreak was based off checkm8 as well.
demo of booting two devices (SE on 13.1.2 and X on 12.4) with checkm8-iousb. all patches are being done dynamically and it works across most devices/versions across 12 and 13 pic.twitter.com/xJEoq3h3WE
— qwertyoruiop (@qwertyoruiopz) October 9, 2019
