A Google security researcher has published details of an exploit found in iOS 11.1.2, which could enable iPhone owners to jailbreak their smartphones.
When users jailbreak an iPhone or iPad, the software restrictions imposed by Apple on its iOS operating system are removed.
This enables root access to the depths of the iOS system itself, as well as allowing users much greater customisation of the operating system, and the ability to install unapproved apps and extensions not available in the App Store.
Apple ends all warranty and support when an iOS device is jailbroken.
There hasn’t been a major public jailbreak available for Apple devices since iOS 10 launched back in September 2016.
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So naturally, when Ian Beer, who works on Google’s Project Zero team, announced he had discovered a vulnerability in iOS that could be used to jailbreak the iPhone – there was excitement amongst the community.
Project Zero is a security devision within Google that focuses on unearthing security issues and informing other developers or manufacturers when something needs to be fixed.
The team briefs the company about a security issue, and then allows them 90 days to fix the problem, before publicly publishing their findings.
Since the exploit discovered by Ian Beer in iOS 11.1.2 was fixed on December 2nd, following the roll-out of iOS 11.2, he was able to follow through on his promise tweet his findings.
The code published by Ian Beer is for research purposes, however, the online community are already desperately trying to turn the vulnerability into a simply one-time jailbreak app.
According to Beer, he was able to successfully get the exploit working on an iPhone 6S, iPhone 7 and sixth-generation iPod Touch.
However, he said “adding more support should be easy”.
It’s rare that exploits in iOS are published publicly, not least because Apple will pay a handsome fee to security researchers to quietly disclose any bugs found in the operating system.