Paul Morris on February 20, 2018, 3:42 am

The State Of iOS 11.2.6 / 11.2.x Jailbreak

Can I jailbreak iOS 11.2.6 / 11.2.5 or even iOS 11.2.2? What’s the current state of iOS 11.2.6 jailbreak? Here we take a look at it and try and answer those questions.

As has been proven time and again, things move fast in the world of jailbreaking. Now that the LiberiOS and Electra jailbreaks are out for iOS 11.0 to iOS 11.1.2, attention has almost immediately moved to whether or not we will see something released into the community offering support for iOS 11.2.x.

First of all, there is a very good reason why the recently released jailbreaks only offers compatibility up to and including iOS 11.1.2. The wonderful kernel level async_awake exploit discovered and released by Ian Beer of Google’s Project Zero enabled the jailbreak we have today in the form of LiberiOS by Jonathan Levin or Electra by CoolStar. Because that exploit was essentially “burned” when Apple was informed about it, and then subsequently patched it in iOS 11.2, it’s no longer available to be used in any firmware after iOS 11.1.2.

So, with that in mind, in order to jailbreak iOS 11.2.1, 11.2.2, iOS 11.2.5 and beyond successfully, someone, or a team of people, will need to have another kernel level exploit capable of allowing them kernel escape privileges. We’ve recently seen a jailbreak demonstrated by the relatively unknown Alibaba Pandora Labs, with company boss Song Yang explaining that the jailbreak is fully untethered and allows full root access, as you would expect. This is the first, and currently only jailbreak we have that claims to liberate devices on iOS 11.2.x. However Yang also went on record as part of that demonstration to confirm that they have no plans at all to release anything to the public.

As we previously mentioned when we covered this news, the official statement from Alibaba Pandora Labs was open to a certain level of interpretation, meaning that we could actually see something release once the bug(s) used have been reported to Apple and patched in future versions of iOS. It’s unknown if that team is planning to cash in on the bug through Apple’s Bug Bounty Program, which means that there is a very small potential of something being released in the future when iOS 11.3 or beyond is released.

So, as a quick recap; the async_awake bug used in iOS 11 – iOS 11.1.2 is patched and no longer available. Apple is no longer signing iOS 11.1.x firmwares. Alibaba Pandora Labs clearly has the means to jailbreak iOS 11.2.x and beyond but isn’t currently planning on releasing anything to public.

It may not sound initially like great news but stay tuned as things can, and often do – as demonstrated by recent flood of iOS 10.3.3 (h3lix) and iOS 11.1.x (to.panga, LiberTV11, LiberiOS, Electra) jailbreak releases – change quickly where jailbreaking is concerned.

We will of course keep you updated. Stay tuned.

Update x1: Apple has now released iOS 11.2.2 to patch Spectre CPU vulnerability. The post above has been updated to reflect this change.

Update x2: iOS 11.2.5 final version is out to fix chaiOS bug, among other things. This post has been updated for it.

Update x3: Zimperium zLabs Team has announced they have got vulnerabilities for iOS 11.2.2 which they will make public soon, and they might lead us to a jailbreak.

Update x4: Apple has stopped signing all firmwares below iOS 11.2.5, meaning you can no longer downgrade from iOS 11.2.5.

Update x5: In what is being touted as biggest leak in history, iBoot and SecureROM code leaks from Apple opens up the possibility of having permanent bootrom-based jailbreak on latest devices. You can learn more on this here.

Update x6: iOS 11.3 SEP has been found to be incompatible with iOS 11.1.2 and below. Here’s what that means for jailbreaking.

Update x7: iOS 11.2.2 jailbreak might be possible soon, stay away from iOS 11.2.5 and beyond. Here are the details.

Update x8: Apple has now released iOS 11.2.6 emergency-patch update in order to fix Telugu Indian character crashing bug.