Last week, Tihmstar revealed found a useful exploit in iOS 11 that could have possibly allowed for an iOS 11.2.6 – iOS 11.4.1 jailbreak for iOS devices featuring a headphone jack. After doing the hard work of getting tfp0, Tihmstar has decided against releasing the standalone exploit since it would interfere with projects that other developers are working on.
On the bright side, Tihmstar is promising to release something cool. It is unclear what this “something cool” the developer is talking about here but if you have an iPhone or iPad running iOS 11 and featuring a headphone jack, you will be able to use it. He also says that if your device is not jailbroken, you can keep it that way. Similarly, if you have already jailbroken your iPhone then that’s fine as well.
i finished the exploit enough to be useful for my purpose, which is porting the KPP bypass to iOS 11(.2.6 and up).
However i unfortunatelly can't release the exploit standalone (as planned originally) just yet, since that would interfere with other peoples projects 🙁— tihmstar (@tihmstar) January 12, 2019
But keep you headphone jacks and lightning adapters excited and stay on iOS 11!
If you're not jailbroken, stay unjailbroken. If you area jailbroken already, that's fine aswell.
There is something cool coming #etason™ 😉— tihmstar (@tihmstar) January 12, 2019
From what we can gather, the original plan to release the standalone exploit for iOS 11.2.6-11.4.1 devices has been scrapped – at least for now. As it would seem, doing so would “interfere with other people’s projects,” and tihmstar intends to use his exploit to port a kernel patch protection (KPP) bypass to iOS 11.2.6 and later.
In response to the original Tweet, unc0ver lead developer Pwn20wnd appears to ask tihmstar to share the exploit with him privately such that unc0ver could be updated to include the iOS 11.4 and 11.4.1 firmware versions, but tihmstar doesn’t appear to have replied publicly. There’s no word yet about whether tihmstar replied to Pwn20wnd privately or not, so we’ll need to wait to find out.
Another Tweet shared by tihmstar minutes after the original encourages iOS 11 users to stay there, adding to “keep your headphone jacks and Lightning adapters excited and stay on iOS 11” whether you’re jailbroken or not. Tihmstar also notes that “something cool is coming,” but without any clues as to what.
Those who’ve already updated to iOS 12 are now stuck on iOS 12, but there’ve been several captivating iOS 12-centric exploit announcements in recent memory, and each one of these could potentially help contribute to a future jailbreak. Of course, that’s not guaranteed.
As always, we recommend anyone excited for jailbreaking to stay on the lowest possible firmware and avoid installing Apple’s software updates. Each update patches vulnerabilities that hackers use to exploit iOS, and installing these makes it tougher to jailbreak your handset.
At the time of this writing, Electra and unc0ver continue to be the latest public jailbreak tools available, and both support iOS 11.0-11.4 beta 3.
Are you excited to learn more about what tihmstar appears to have planned with his exploit? Share in the comments section below.