Paul Morris on February 3, 2016, 2:48 am

Pangu Team Recommends Updating To iOS 9.2.1, Here’s What You Need To Know

Whenever we hear any kind of public outcry from a member of a prominent jailbreak team, it’s always going to lead to speculation that something of note is about to happen. A relatively well-known individual by the name of Windknown – who is one of the core members of the Pangu jailbreak team responsible for the Pangu 9 untethered solution – has posted an in-depth technical article over on the official Pangu blog explaining the security vulnerabilities and fixes in iOS 9.2 and iOS 9.2.1. It’s extremely technical and in-depth, but definitely worth a read for those with an interest in iOS security.

The extremely short version of the report is that if you don’t care about having a jailbreak on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, then it’s undeniably beneficial to upgrade that hardware to iOS 9.2.1 for security peace of mind. Windknown takes the opportunity to divulge and express his technical expertise and capabilities by talking about multiple kernel vulnerabilities that had perviously been reported to Apple by members of the Google Project Zero team.

For most of us, the majority of the writing will be entirely overly technical, but there is a specific section to take away from it all. Via Google Translate:

It is noteworthy that this loophole in iOS sand box trigger, and therefore in the APP can directly attack the kernel, the kernel code is executed to obtain permission. We recommend that users upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible, and to avoid the installation of unknown origin APP.

It may come across as a little broken in translation from Chinese, but the gist of it is that iOS 9.2.1 clearly contains a number of important security fixes that would prevent the execution of malicious code on the device.

Of course, this out-of-the-blue post will likely result in increased speculation about the potential of an upcoming iOS 9.2.1 jailbreak. Rather than take it for exactly what it seems to be – a technical write up on the improvements made within iOS 9.2.1 and the vulnerabilities of its predecessor – certain users will attempt to look deeper into this post and try to ascertain if it means an untethered solution for iOS 9.2.1 is on the horizon. We’re fairly confident that this is nothing more than an educational post intended to offer some important security advice. However, stranger things have happened.

In any case, here’s what you should do: If you care about jailbreaking, it’s best to sit tight on iOS 9.2 and wait for a team to release a jailbreak for it. Luca Tedesco, who showed off a jailbreak for iOS 9.3 and iOS 9.2.1, also recommends doing the same. If you do decide to stay on iOS 9.2, make sure you stay away from any non-App Store apps as these apps have the potential of comprising the security of devices running iOS 9.2 and below. If jailbreaking is not your cup of tea, update to iOS 9.2.1 as soon as possible for security purposes.

(source: Pangu [Google Translate])