Oliver Haslam on May 26, 2020, 2:35 am

iOS 14 Beta Download Leaked To Developers And Hackers Since Feb 2020

iOS 14 beta download has been leaked to developers and hackers since as back as February of this year. Here are the details.

We’ve heard way more about iOS 14 so far this year than we normally would in the lead up to a WWDC event and we knew that some people outside of Apple had early access to it.

Now a new VICE report says that a build of iOS 14 has been in the hands of hackers, researchers, and bloggers since as early as February. That’s five months before WWDC 2020 where the software will be announced.

We’ve seen so many iOS 14 leaks in recent weeks and months that it’s difficult to imagine that any major feature hasn’t already been outed. If that’s the case it’s possible the WWDC unveiling will be a rather dour affair, but we’re still crossing our fingers for something new come June 22nd.

VICE says that it hasn’t been able to confirm where the leak came from, but it’s surely something Apple’s security team will be keen to discover. This comes at a time where information leaking out of Apple is at an all-time high and unannounced products continue to leak.

Motherboard has not been able to independently verify exactly how it leaked, but five sources in the jailbreaking community familiar with the leak told us they think that someone obtained a development iPhone 11 running a version of iOS 14 dated December 2019, which was made to be used only by Apple developers. According to those sources, someone purchased it from vendors in China for thousands of dollars, and then extracted the iOS 14 internal build and distributed it in the iPhone jailbreaking and hacking community.

(Image: AR-based QR codes found in iOS 14)

Given the fact that iPhone 11 handsets running iOS 14 code are likely in short supply it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that Apple will figure out where this leak came from eventually.