iPhone X iOS 11.2 Untethered Jailbreak Achieved Using Google Proof-Of-Concept Code

At the time, it was thought that the exploit would allow for a tethered jailbreak, meaning that the device would need to be hooked up to a computer with a USB cable each time that it was rebooted (to reinject the code). Earlier this week, the Project Zero researcher, Ian Beer, released his proof-of-concept code for the iOS 11 jailbreak. The jailbreak is made possible by a memory corruption fault that allows code to be run with system-level privileges.

Using the exploit provided by Beer, researchers from Alibaba’s Pandora Labs had demonstrated a fully functioning jailbreak for iOS 11.2 and 11.2.1 working on an iPhone X. What's most interesting, however, is that according to Pandora Lab Chief Song Yang, this a fully untethered jailbreak, meaning the rebooting the device will not "erase" the effects of the modified code.

And as you can see in the image above, the infamous Cydia package manager app is installed on an iPhone X. While all of this sounds like excellent news for those that are still hard up for jailbreaking their iOS devices, there is one HUGE caveat to this news from Pandora Labs -- it will not be releasing its jailbreak method:

Although iOS 11.2 fixes some security issues, we confirmed the new iOS will still be jailbroken on the first day it was released. Although we were able to jailbreak iOS 11.2 quickly, we were limited to security research purposes, our team won’t provide any jailbreak tool.

There's still hope that other researchers can find a similar route to jailbreak iOS 11.2.x and release their own solution to the public since Pandora Labs wants to keep its method close to the vest.