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posted by janrinok on Saturday September 28 2019, @03:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-news-or-bad? dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow9427

New "unpatchable" iPhone exploit could allow permanent jailbreaking on hundreds of millions of devices

All devices from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone X are impacted

A newly announced iOS exploit could lead to a permanent, unblockable jailbreak on hundreds of millions of iPhones, according to researcher axi0mX who discovered it. Dubbed "checkm8," the exploit is a bootrom vulnerability that could give hackers deep access to iOS devices on a level that Apple would be unable to block or patch out with a future software update. That would make it one of the biggest developments in the iPhone hacking community in years.

The exploit is specifically a bootrom exploit, meaning it's taking advantage of a security vulnerability in the initial code that iOS devices load when they boot up. And since it's ROM (read-only memory), it can't be overwritten or patched by Apple through a software update, so it's here to stay. It's the first bootrom-level exploit publicly released for an iOS device since the iPhone 4, which was released almost a decade ago.

In a follow-up tweet, axi0mX explained that they released the exploit to the public because a "bootrom exploit for older devices makes iOS better for everyone. Jailbreakers and tweak developers will be able to jailbreak their phones on latest version, and they will not need to stay on older iOS versions waiting for a jailbreak. They will be safer."


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Monday September 30 2019, @12:10AM

    by stormwyrm (717) on Monday September 30 2019, @12:10AM (#900616) Journal
    But I do imagine if your washing machine breaks down you'd want to be able to fix it even without the manufacturer's blessing, or repurpose it or its parts to some other end. Apple on the other hand actively works against you doing any of these things with their mobile devices. They thus continue to assert ownership of a device you supposedly "bought" from them. They are no different from game cons
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    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
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