The long drawn out cat and mouse game between Apple and those looking to liberate iOS from its walled garden continues. Italian developer Luca Todesco, who is generally more commonly known via his @qwertyoruiop Twitter handle, has managed to jailbreak iOS 9.2.1 and posted a screenshot of Cydia running on the iPhone 6 to prove that it was up and running on his device of choice.
While Todesco’s tweet that accompanied the screenshot of Cydia running on his iPhone 6 may have claimed “no releases”, it at least shows that iOS 9.2.1 is still very much exploitable.
I lied. All Hail 화격자 리더. No releases. pic.twitter.com/VrnpJS6wv3
— @qwertyoruiop@nso.group (@qwertyoruiopz) January 7, 2016
While Todesco’s tweet does mention “no releases,” that does not necessarily mean that Todesco plans to keep the jailbreak for himself. He could pass his findings on to another team, which could then be used to create a complete jailbreak release. Todesco did in fact contribute to the first iOS 9 jailbreak that Pangu had released earlier this year, but Apple had patched that jailbreak with the release of iOS 9.1.
Whether the jailbreak is legit is still up for debate, but he’s no slouch when it comes to security research involving iOS. In fact, Todesco was recently credited by Apple in one of its iOS security fix acknowledgements for iOS 9.2.
Todesco also jailbroke iOS 8.4.1 after iOS 9 was jailbroken; however there was no official GUI or tool created for that jailbreak. Instead, the source code was posted on Github.
To further prove the legitimacy of the screenshot, Todesco posted the Kernel dumps for iOS 9.2.1.
TaiG, the team behind several iOS jailbreaks, has also been rumored to have an iOS 9.2.1 jailbreak, but Todesco says he’s unsure if the two jailbreaks share the same exploits.
Even though iOS 9.2.1 has been jailbroken, it is important to note that the firmware is still in beta (Apple just released the second beta earlier this week). If any jailbreak were to surface, it would likely be after an official iOS 9.2.1 release.
As always, we’ll bring you more on this one as soon as it develops. Stay tuned.
iOS 9.2.1 Has Been Successfully Jailbroken! Well-known hacker Luca Todesco