A jailbreak for iOS 11.1.2 is about to become a reality, as an exploit for iOS 11 has been dug up.
The man who started it all is Ian Beer, an employee at Google's Project Zero, which is a team of security analysts tasked with scouring for vulnerabilities so that developers can patch issues as soon as possible.
iPhone Jailbreak iOS 11
It all began when Beer tweeted that he found an exploit for iOS 11, calling it "tfp0" and promising that he will upload his findings soon.
If you're interested in bootstrapping iOS 11 kernel security research keep a research-only device on iOS 11.1.2 or below. Part I (tfp0) release soon.
— Ian Beer (@i41nbeer) December 5, 2017
That was on Dec. 5. Fast-forward to Dec. 11, he kept his word and released the key — or rather, code — that paves the way to a potential jailbreak for iOS 11.1.2.
iOS 11.1.2, now with more kernel debugging: https://t.co/PIKbD3Gwx9 — Ian Beer (@i41nbeer) December 11, 2017
What Now?
It should be cleared up that the bug hunter didn't roll out a full jailbreak. It's primarily for research purposes, after all.
However, hackers can use it to conjure up a jailbreak for iOS 11.1.2. That said, a lot of them have already started on it when Beer shared his work, including some folks over at Reddit.
To all wen eta naggers, if it wasn't clear: UPDATE TO iOS 11.1.2 (TvOS 11.1) NOW - that's what @i41nbeer's TFP0 will be for. iOS 11.1 NO LONGER SIGNED BY AAPL. Ian's PoC won't be full JB, but will enable partial (kdata) on >=i7, and(possibly)full on<=6s, and it's best you'll get.
— Jonathan Levin (@Morpheus______) December 8, 2017
What's interesting here is that Beer tested it out on the iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, and iPod Touch 6G but mentioned that "adding more support should be easy." In other words, it's not a stretch to believe that the iPhone 8 and iPhone X will be jailbroken in the foreseeable future too. More than that, tfp0 has been confirmed to play nicely with tvOS 11.x and Apple TV 4K.
Congratulating unparalleled paragon of hacking @i41nbeer for a truly marvelous, clean exploit which also works (*confirmed*) on TvOS 11.x and the Apple TV 4K! My #Jailbreak #Toolkit will be expanded to support this platform as well - and #LiberTV will finally get its update :-) — Jonathan Levin (@Morpheus______) December 12, 2017
In short, those who don't exactly tinker with code and the like but want to jailbreak their iPhones or iPod Touch will have to wait until those with the know-how releases necessary software.
