Items tagged with Jailbreak
Over the weekend, news spread of an unpatchable "checkm8" exploit that could allow millions of iPhone users to quickly and easily jailbreak their handsets. Lest there was any doubt it works, the hacker who developed the exploit posted a video on Twitter showing checkm8 in action on an iPhone X running iOS 13.1.1. The bad news for Apple is the nature of this exploit makes patching it away impossible. That's because checkm8 works its magic in the iOS bootrom, which itself resides in read-only memory inside a chip in affected iPhone models. Any jailbreaks that leverage the iOS bootrom can't be mitigated with a software patch. HACKED! Verbose booting iPhone X looks pretty cool. Starting in DFU Mode,...
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Back in the early days of the iPhone, jailbreaking was an incredibly common practice for enthusiasts. With an iOS jailbreak and third-party app stores like Cydia, iPhone users were able to add software features and apps to their devices that Apple had yet to provide (sometimes years prior). Two things happened to shrink the jailbreak community over the years: 1) Apple became more adept at patching up security holes in a timely fashion and even began employing hackers to improve its defenses and 2) Apple has added tons of functionality to iOS that made jailbreaking not worth the time or added security risk. For those that are still adamant about jailbreaking, there is some...
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Installing unauthorized software on your iPhone device that enables it to function in ways Apple does not allow, a process known as jailbreaking, can lead to a plethora of problems, Apple warns in a support document. According to Apple, jailbreaking an iPhone can cause security vulnerabilities and general instability. It can also leaded to lower battery life, disruption of services such as iCloud and iMessage, and have other adverse issues Flexibility is one of the key differences between Apple's proprietary iOS and Google's open source Android mobile operating systems. Apple prefers to have complete control over the user experience and ecosystem, while Google leaves it up to the community of...
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There is new jailbreaking software available for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and iPad mini, so long as they have not been updated to the latest version of iOS. Using Electra, a free jailbreaking tool, iOS owners can wedge Cydia onto their mobile device and fetch apps that can only be installed on jailbroken phones and tablets, along with access settings that are normally untouchable. The jailbreak tool is for iOS 11 and works on versions up through iOS 11.1.2. So, it's compatible with iOS 11.0, 11.0.1, 11.0.2, 11.0.3, 11.1, 11.1.1, and 11.1.2. Apple recently pushed out an update to iOS that brings the version number for iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices to 11.2.6, and it appears that Electra does...
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PlayStation 4 fans looking to set their console free from the clutches of Sony will soon have a new jailbreak to try out. The PS4 4.05 Kernel Exploit from Developer Specter has been published on GitHub for download. The jailbreak devs are specific in noting that the exploit doesn't contain any code that will defeat anti-piracy measures or allow the users to run homebrew apps. The exploit summary reads in part, "In this project you will find a full implementation of the 'namedobj' kernel exploit for the PlayStation 4 on 4.05. It will allow you to run arbitrary code as kernel, to allow jailbreaking and kernel-level modifications to the system. This release however, does not contain any...
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Over the past few weeks, iOS enthusiasts that have clung to the practice of jailbreaking have anxiously awaited a public software release to "unleash the beast" so to speak. The first proof-of-concept untethered jailbreak was announced earlier this month by Alibaba’s Pandora Labs, which was based on the work of Google Project Zero researcher Ian Beer. Today, there's a fully-fledged jailbreak that has been released for Apple's current generation of smartphones, which include the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X (and all other 64-bit iOS devices for that matter). The jailbreak, which is called LiberiOS, was developed by Jonathan Levin. There are some downsides to this jailbreak, however,...
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One week ago, we brought you news of an exploit discovered by a Google Project Zero researcher that had the potential to jailbreak iPhones. Jailbreaking allows users to install unsupported and unauthorized applications and services on an iPhone, but also leaves the devices more vulnerability to malware and other security risks. 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...
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Way back in the day -- dating back to just after the release of the first iPhone -- hackers chipped away at the security defenses in iOS to give users functionality that was lacking in the default software. This practice is known as jailbreaking, and it is something that Apple unsurprisingly frowns upon since it breaks through its “walled garden”. Ian Beer, a researcher working for Google's Project Zero team, announced via a tweet that he has discovered an exploit that could jailbreak devices running iOS 11.1.2 or older. Project Zero is tasked with finding bugs in competing software, as we've seen over the years with the prickly relationship Google has with Microsoft on the matter....
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Well that did not take long. It has been less than two weeks since Nintendo released its hybrid Switch console and already someone has managed to hack the device. That bit is perhaps not too surprising—it was only a matter of time, after all—though the unexpected part is that the inventive hacker used an old WebKit exploit to thwart the Nintendo Switch's intentionally locked browser features. The hacker goes by "qwertyoruiop" on Twitter. If the name looks familiar, it's likely because he is the same one who contributed to the popular PlayStation 4 1.76 jailbreak. He has also post jailbreaks for several versions of iOS, Apple's tighly guarded mobile operating system used on iPhone, iPad, and iPod...
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Just a couple of weeks ago, we wrote about the Israeli security firm Cellebrite, and how it suffered a major data breach. After the information began to trickle out, it seemed like no real damage was done. Cellebrite itself said that what leaked was an old, irrelevant backup. A new discovery, however, questions that answer. If you're not familiar with Cellebrite, it was the firm that the U.S. government hired to break into an iPhone 5c to aide with investigation of the December 2015 San Bernardino terror attack. Apple at the time refused to help crack the phone, so Cellebrite was brought in, and succeeded. Not long after, the firm boasted about its ability to crack nearly any smartphone - be...
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It didn't take long for someone to figure out how to jailbreak Apple's newfangled iPhone 7 handset. A 19-year-old hacker known online as "qwertyoruiop" and offline as Luca Todesco needed just 24 hours to thwart the security measures in place of Apple's "best, most advanced iPhone ever" and iOS 10, the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system. By jailbreaking the iPhone 7, Todesco put himself in full control of the device. The biggest benefit to jailbreaking is being able to install apps outside of the App Store that haven't been approved by Apple. There's a world of functionality and features out there that Apple hasn't authorized, and if you want to install them, jailbreaking your handset...
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Apple's operating systems might be considered as some of the most secure on the planet, but as has been proven time and time again, nothing is bulletproof. Not even the company's latest iOS build, it seems. ZERODIUM, a firm that rewards those for finding unknown bugs, has just announced that a team has secured its rights to a bounty worth a staggering $1 million, or roughly the equivalent of 1,333x 16GB iPhone 6S Plus units. Speaking of which, if you are in the dark about what the 6S Plus brings to the table, check out our in-depth review. In order to succeed in ZERODIUM's challenge, the attackers had to remotely exploit an iOS 9.1/9.2b device to install an app with full permissions. The initiator...
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Zerodium, a new cybersecurity firm that pays independent researchers for their zero-day discoveries, is offering a big reward to anyone who creates an untethered, browser-based jailbreak for iOS 9. By "big" we're talking seven figures -- $1 million dollars, which it will pay out to the first three people or teams who can provide a remote jailbreak for the latest version of Apple's mobile software. "Apple iOS, like all operating system, is often affected by critical security vulnerabilities, however due to the increasing number of security improvements and the effectiveness of exploit mitigations in place, Apple's iOS is currently the most secure mobile OS. But don't be fooled, secure does not...
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To nobody's real surprise, the jailbreak community upon learning that the Apple Watch was freewheelin' it on wrists everywhere without a browser onboard set out to fill that gap. And in somewhat short order the celebrated Comex — the developer behind JailBreakMe, and a former Apple intern — has weighed in first, posting a video to Twitter over the weekend that features an Apple Watch running a Google web page via a web browser. Comex's video makes a good case for why Apple hasn't (yet) included a version of its Safari browser in Watch OS, illustrating the need to scroll over and across vast screen real estate — relatively speaking, of course...
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