The Jailbreaking Community Is Bracing for Google to Publicly Drop an iPhone Exploit by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
From the post:
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Because exploits are so valuable, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a publicly accessible iPhone jailbreak even for older versions of iOS (let alone one in the wild for an up to date iPhone.) But a tweet sent by a Google researcher Wednesday has got the security and jailbreaking communities in a frenzy. The tweet suggests that Google is about to drop an exploit that is a major step toward an iPhone jailbreak, and other researchers say they will be able to take that exploit and turn it into a full jailbreak.It might seem surprising that an iPhone exploit would be released by Google, Apple’s closest competitor, but the company has a history of doing so, albeit with less hype than this one is garnering.
Ian Beer is a Google Project Zero security researcher, and one of the most prolific iOS bug hunters. Wednesday, he told his followers to keep their “research-only” devices on iOS 11.1.2 because he was about to release “tfp0” soon. (tfp0 stands for “task for pid 0,” or the kernel task port, which gives you control of the core of the operating system.) He also hinted that this is just the first part of more releases to come. iOS 11.1.2 was just patched and updated last week by Apple; it is extremely rare for exploits for recent versions of iOS to be made public.
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Another surprise in the offing for the holiday season! See Franceschi-Bicchierai’s post for much speculation and possibilities.
Benefits from a current iPhone Exploit
- Security researchers obtain better access to research iPhone security issues
- FBI told by courts to hire local hackers instead of badgering Apple
- Who carries iPhones? (security clueless public officials)
From improving the lot of security researchers, local employment for hackers and greater exposure of public officials, what’s there to not like?
Looking forward to the drop and security researchers jumping on it like a terrier pack on a rat.