Excitement is swirling around in the jailbreak community Monday evening after hacker and iOS developer @__spv took to Twitter to share thought-provoking Tweets related to untethered jailbreaks.
Untethered jailbreaks, which have been a hot topic of conversation since security researcher Linus Henze demonstrated one on an iPhone 12 Pro Max running iOS 14.5.1 last week, are a type of jailbreak that continues to work even after rebooting the hacked device without having to re-run the jailbreak tool.
Among some of @__spv’s latest Tweets are the following, which suggests that the hacker is in possession of a working jailbreak untether that has been patched by Apple’s signed system volume (SSV) security mechanism:
Because of SSV, it's very possible my untethers are dead for good.
There's a very high possibility of me dropping at least one of them quite soon.
Stay tuned. 😉
— @spv@spv.sh (@__spv) September 20, 2021
According to Apple, SSV verifies the integrity of system content at runtime and then rejects any data that lacks a valid cryptographic signature from Apple. The security mechanism is a step by the Cupertino-based company to thwart software tampering, which encompasses many forms of jailbreaking such as untethers.
iOS & iPadOS 15 appear to incorporate this new SSV security mechanism, and because of that, the untethers that @__spv has been sitting on are likely toast on versions post-iOS & iPadOS 14. Consequently, the hacker alludes to the idea of releasing at least one of those untethers to the general public.
Demo of CVE-2021-30740, CVE-2021-30768, CVE-2021-30769, CVE-2021-30770 and CVE-2021-30773 on iOS 14.5.1, iPhone 12 Pro Max pic.twitter.com/k2df20E9yU
— Linus Henze (@LinusHenze) September 13, 2021
The exploits used for this iOS 14.5.1 jailbreak include CVE-2021-30740, CVE-2021-30768, CVE-2021-30769, CVE-2021-30770, and CVE-2021-30773.
Right now, all iOS 14 jailbreak tools only support jailbreaking iOS 14 – iOS 14.3. There’s Checkra1n that supports jailbreaking iOS 14.3 and newer builds, but it only works with a selected few older iPhones like the iPhone 8, iPhone 7, etc.
With iOS 15 close to public release, the chances of an untethered iOS 14.5.1 jailbreak being released are very slim, especially since Apple is no longer signing the firmware as well. Security researcher Linus Henze has also likely posted the video just to show that an untethered jailbreak is still possible in this day and age. After all, it has been ages since an untethered iOS jailbreak was available for newer iPhones.
If you have been looking to jailbreak your iPhone, your best bet is to hope the jailbreak community can soon find some exploits in iOS 15 that can be developed into a full-fledged jailbreak tool.