If you’ve been waiting patiently on iOS 11.4-11.4.1 for ajailbreakto surface, then you might be in for a treat. Hacking guru tihmstar appears to be tinkering with anexploitthat supports these firmware versions, at least on specific devices.
ATweetshared by tihmstar Tuesday eveningdenotes how the exploit in question supportsiOSversions up to 11.4.1; on the other hand, it also relies on theheadphonejack. This caveat means that some devices, like those powered byApple’s A10 and A11 chips, aren’t supported:
Devices powered by Apple’sA10chip include theiPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and 2018 iPad models, while devices powered by Apple’s A11 chip include theiPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, andiPhone X. A12-powered devices don’t supportiOS 11at all, excluding them from consideration entirely.
In another Tweetshared Thursday morning, tihmstar divulged that he “got kernel base” after playing around with the exploit on his own:
As it would seem, tihmstar has achieved read rights to device’s kernel thus far, but more work is needed to produce offsets and write rights. It remains to be seen whether tihmstar will attempt to integrate support for unsupported devices at this time.
While these announcements are a far cry from a public jailbreak release for iOS 11.4 and 11.4.1, it’s still a step in the right direction. It’s also comforting to know that a trusted name in the jailbreak community is actively researching the possibility of a jailbreak for thesefirmwareversions, regardless of device support.
The latest public jailbreaks available at the time of this writing areElectraandunc0ver, but they only support iOS 11.0-11.4 beta 3. If successful, then tihmstar’s newfangled efforts will provide more iOS 11 users with access to a jailbreak (assuming they have a compatible device handy).
Those usingiOS 12instead will need to continue waiting. Whilethere’ve been severalcaptivatingiOS 12-centric exploit announcementsin recent memory, there is no official word of anyone working on an iOS 12 jailbreak as of yet.
As prominent members of the jailbreak community have expressed previously, anyone eager to jailbreakshould stay on the lowest possible firmwareinstead of installing Apple’s frequent firmware updates.Updatestend to patch the exploits that can help hackers achieve a working jailbreak, and installing them reduces your chance of being able to jailbreak in the near future.
Are you excited to see what becomes of tihmstar’s iOS 11.4-11.4.1-centric work? Let us know in the comments section below.
