Paul Morris on April 20, 2020, 8:16 pm

tfp0 Jailbreak Exploit Achieved On A13 Device Running iOS 13.4.1

A developer and security researcher who uses the Twitter handle @ProteasWang has announced the existence of a tfp0 exploit on an Apple A13 device running Apple’s latest iOS firmware, iOS 13.4.1.

This latest jailbreak-based revelation will likely be extremely important to tools like unc0ver as developers stretch themselves to support as many devices as possible.

Those iPhone owners around the globe running an iPhone 5 through to an iPhone X have a right to feel passionate and enthusiastic about the current state of jailbreaking. The discovery of the checkm8 exploit, which is hardware-based and therefore cannot be patched by Apple, ever, means that the checkra1n jailbreak will always be able to jailbreak those devices, regardless of the firmware that they are running.

Undeniably, that is great news and a huge win for the jailbreak community. With that said, it does mean that owners of Apple’s more modern devices, such as those powered by the A12 or A13 processors, are somewhat left out in the dark and have a reliance on security researchers consistently finding exploits that can support new firmware releases. @ProteasWang looks to have done exactly that with this latest social media-based announcement:

This is a tfp0 bug and exp which affecting iOS 13.4.1 on A13.

As far as the “tfp0” vernacular goes, @ProteasWang is simply saying that he has managed to find a way to write and execute his own code at the kernel level on an A13 device running iOS 13.4.1. A tfp0 exploit isn’t the only ingredient in a functional jailbreak but it definitely is one of the most important parts of the recipe as it gives the creator of the jailbreak the ability to execute the necessary code with the correct privileges at the necessary level to inject the jailbreak payload.

Time will tell but this could quite easily be incorporated into an existing tool like unc0ver to offer support for A13 devices running Apple’s latest firmware.

Of course, for that to happen, Wang will need to do the community a solid and actually release all information pertaining to the tfp0 into the public domain, or, at the very minimum, share it with the creators of unc0ver and/or the upcoming Chimera13 jailbreak solution. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for serious progression on this one.