Paul Morris on January 13, 2019, 7:56 am

iOS 12.1.2 Jailbreak Update: Here’s What Is New In The Scene

Min Zheng of Alibaba has taken to Twitter once again to show off an iOS 12.1.2 exploit. As part of the announcement, Zheng has attached a number of command line screenshots as well as an iOS-powered device showing iOS 12.1.2 (Build 16C101) in operation running on an iPhone 6s.

This announcement is particularly relevant given the fact that @S0rryMyBad has also made a jailbreak-based announcement in the last few days, while tihmstar has also updated us about his his progress with iOS 11.4-11.4.1.

However, the spotlight is once again well and truly on the iOS jailbreak community and will be further brightened by the fact that one of Alibaba’s most respected and well-known engineers has published something into the public domain.

The title of the work and project being shown off by Min Zheng appears to be “Port-oriented Programming Attack Proof 2: Getting task_for_pid_0 & root on iOS 12.1.2 (iPhone 6s).”

Based on the previous history, we can only imagine that this is ultimately going to form the basis of a presentation at a security conference somewhere in the world. However, once that conference has taken place and the information is put out publicly, it could then also have a knock-on effect for jailbreaking in that it could be a vital piece of a potential first iOS 12-based public jailbreak.

We know that Zheng and his Alibaba team aren’t going to put together a fully functional jailbreak and release that but this work could definitely be interesting to others in the community with the requisite skills and knowledge to use it toward something productive. Typically, in this situation, the Alibaba team will discover bugs, put an exploit in place, present this at a global security conference and then wait for the bug to be patched by Apple before the full information is released. We don’t know the timeline on that currently but we can keep our collective fingers crossed that this does actually turn into something that the community can benefit from.

This will not be an entire body of work needed for a full iOS 12 jailbreak but it could definitely be a positive step in the right direction. Let’s hope that something comes from it and, as always, we will keep you informed as and when anything develops.

(Source: @SparkZheng [Twitter])