Cydia Substrate update adds iOS 13 support, fixes major bug

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The jailbreaking community got a pleasant surprise this Sunday, after Saurik updated a Cydia Substrate to support iOS 13. Further, the update also fixed a major port name leak issue.

Cydia Substrate update: all you need to know

This latest Cydia Substrate update came as a big surprise to many in the jailbreak community as Saurik, also known as the “Godfather of Jailbreaking,” has been quiet for a while. Saurik has a habit of keeping things to himself and then coming up with updates whenever his work schedule allows.

Saurik’s latest update to Cydia Substrate carries the build version 0.9.7100. For those unfamiliar, Cydia Substrate is a tool that is used to inject tweaks in the Checkra1n and Unc0ver jailbreak.

A point to note is that Saurik did not make any announcement about the update. Rather, the information about the update comes from Checkra1n and Unc0ver co-developer Sam Bingner (via Reddit).

The changelog of the Cydia Substrate update says that the tool will now work with iOS 13. Moreover, the update also fixes a serious issue that could result in the Substrate to lock up and break. Bingner says that he has tested the update with “a few hundred thousand processes, and it’s been clean.”

“Saurik has updated Cydia Substrate to fix the issue where it would stop hooking after an indeterminate period. It was found to be due to a mach port name leak that would cause it to no longer be able to modify processes after spawning somewhere around 50,000 processes,” Bingner says.

The Cydia Substrate is now in non-beta, meaning iOS 13 users can use it. If you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPad running iOS 13 – iOS 13.3 – then you should immediately update to the latest version. As said above, this update should fix the issue where you faced problems with jailbreak tweaks a few hours after booting up/restarting your phone.

If the update does not appear after launching Cydia or other package managers, then you need to refresh the sources. It must be noted that the Chimera and Electra jailbreaks use Substitute instead of Cydia Substrate, so this latest update won’t show up on those jailbreaks.

You can refer to our guide on how to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad using Checkra1n.

How does Apple plan to end jailbreaking?

In separate news, Apple is reportedly moving ahead with its efforts to end jailbreaking. The company, in August, sued Corellium, an iOS virtualization company, because the former believes that the latter is making a profit from selling perfect replicas of iOS without a license. Apple claims that selling replicas of iOS results in copyright infringement.

Corellium, on the other hand, claims that it is making replicas to support the development of research tools. Apple, however, claims that the tool is used to discover and sell vulnerabilities in the market. An iOS vulnerability that powers the unc0ver jailbreak was reportedly discovered while the developers were using Corellium’s tool.

To further tighten its grip on Corellium, Apple amended the lawsuit last month to also claim that Corellium’s action violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act filings, and that Corellium is allowing users to jailbreak with malicious intent.

To counter Apple’s lawsuit, Amanda Gorton, Corellium CEO, is working to gather support from the jailbreak and app development community. Gorton is accusing Apple of making efforts to crackdown on jailbreaking. The company claims that instead of using or replicating iOS, it deploys its own software to execute iOS on varying devices.

“Apple is using this case as a trial balloon in a new angle to crack down on jailbreaking. Apple has made it clear that it does not intend to limit this attack to Corellium: it is seeking to set a precedent to eliminate public jailbreaks,” Gorton said in a post on the company’s website.

Further, Gorton notes that jailbreaks are essential to test the security of their apps and many other third-party apps. Since Apple’s OS is very restrictive, finding vulnerabilities and security issues would be very difficult without jailbreak. To back his arguments, Gorton said that ToTok app’s analysis would not have been possible without a jailbreak.

Gorton suggested that jailbreak benefits Apple as well, as many iOS features are inspired by jailbreak apps and tweaks. Moreover, Gorton notes that Apple has long been aware of Corellium’s technology, and even “encouraged its development.”

Corellium even participated in Apple’s invitation-only Security Bounty Program. However, Apple never paid the company even after accepting and using the bugs that Corellium submitted. Later, Apple came up with its own competing product and soon after it sued Corellium.

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