iOS 11.3.1 Jailbreak May Be Possible With New Kernel Exploit

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Ian Beer, a prominent developer in the iOS jailbreaking community, has now released another proof of concept for an exploit that may lead to an iOS 11.3.1 jailbreak.

Ian Beer

Ian Beer is a member of Google Project Zero, and has been instrumental in bringing about the technology and discoveries needed in order to create modern jailbreaks. Before the key exploit that he discovered late last year, the jailbreaking community was growing stale and there hadn’t been any major developments for a good amount of time.

With the jailbreak arena having been largely stagnant, it was Ian Beer who was able to give us te opportunity to jumpstart progress once again. Since these developments, the jailbreaking community has been charging full speed ahead in order to provide timely releases that are almost coinciding with the numbered retail releases.

iOS 11.3.1 Jailbreak

While this new bug hasn’t led to the creation of an iOS 11.3.1 jailbreak quite yet, the emply_list kernel bug has given developers one more tool that may eventually lead to the full creation of a more open operating system.

Ian Beer has never developed a jailbreak of his own, but a number of his exploits have been instrumental in creating tools like the Electra jailbreak which opens up devices running iOS 11.1.2. It’s reasonable to expect, then, that an iOS 11.3.1 jailbreak may be possible after the reveal of the empty_list kernel bug provided the community is poised to take advantage of it.

However, he has been the finder of kernel-level bugs and the creator of a number of exploit proofs-of-concept which show how those bugs can be used and exploited. One of those projects was utilized in the current Electra tool which liberates iOS devices running iOS 11.1.2. His work is also going to be embedded within the next-generation of Electra which will jailbreak iOS 11.3.1 on all devices.

Previously, CoolStar, the developer behind the Electra jailbreak, had insinuated that the first upgrade to the platform that would allow an iOS 11.3.1 jailbreak may have come as a developer-only release that would require an active and paid APple Developer account in order to function, but with the introduction of this new exploit it’s looking like that is no longer the case.

Ian Beer had previously released an exploit for 11.3.1 that required a jailbreak in order to function, but this newest empty_list kernel bug does not necessitate that sort of access.

Now that the new exploit has been made public, it’s likely that it will find itself into an Electra iOS 11.3.1 jailbreak that will make it possible to have an open operating system on one of the newest updates. While we’re currently on iOS 11.4 at this point, iOS 11.3.1 does introduce a number of new features such as the battery management tool that was released as a response to the controversial throttling practice.

Hopefully in the coming weeks we get more information from the teams involved in the jailbreak—shedding some light on the potential for a fully-functional iOS 11.3.1 jailbreak that is open to all.

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