Paul Morris on October 19, 2018, 11:59 pm

Ian Beer Releases iOS 11.4-11.4.1 Exploits, Sparking Off New Jailbreak Speculation

Project Zero’s Ian Beer has furnished the jailbreak and security research communities with yet more of his jailbreak-based goodness. As expected, the proficient security researcher has pushed out a selection of bugs pertaining to iOS 11.4 through iOS 11.4.1.

A fairly significant percentage of iOS device owners have already taken the opportunity to move on to pastures new as far as iOS version is concerned. This has involved iPhone and iPad owners moving away from iOS 11 and adopting Apple’s latest major release, iOS 12.

With it, those device owners have decided to not only invite all of iOS 12’s features and improvements into their day-to-day digital lives but also the security enhancements and the fact that there is no jailbreak available whatsoever within the public domain.

Also, the release and continued development of iOS 12.x.x has meant that researchers like Ian Beer feel comfortable enough to release what they have discovered and have been working on as they look to re-focus their attention on the newer, modern version of iOS. With that in mind, and as per previous information on the topic, Ian Beer has released all of his iOS 11.4 through iOS 11.4.1 work in the security research field, which includes kernel info leaks and UaF data.

This is definitely not enough for anyone to put together a full jailbreak for iOS 11.4 or iOS 11.4.1 but is a good foundation for any additional work to be carried out. That is if someone actually wants to take on the challenge and tackle iOS 11.x.x.

The release includes a lot of information as well as structured proof-of-concept collections that actually show how this work can be implemented and put to good use to exploit Apple’s iOS platform for the particular versions that the bugs support. Hopefully, as far as some users are concerned who have stayed on iOS 11.4.x, this will be enough for people to actually kick into life and start working towards releasing a public iOS 11.4/11.4.1 jailbreak. Fingers crossed for that one.

We must stress that this isn’t everything that is needed for someone to pull together a full jailbreak for the aforementioned platforms that Ian’s work supports. However, we can only wait and see what happens as we move forward once that work has been out in the public domain for a period of time.

To check out all the great stuff from Beer, head over the source at Chromium, here, and here.