Security researcher and former jailbreak team developer evasi0n @pod2g made rare comments on Twitter this week after Luca Todesco spoke at the latest Hexacon security conference.
In a series of tweets posted on Monday afternoon, @ pod2g, now at Vigilant Labs, echoed the message of Todesco’s presentation: iPhone hacking is harder, and that Apple’s security team is taking it more seriously than ever before.
A brief overview of my perception of the iOS world after Hexacon. The Apple SEAR team has done a great job over the past couple of years, and many of my fellow iOS senior researchers have moved to Android (for this reason).
This is unprecedented and speaks volumes about how much iOS security has improved. For those not in the know, check out @qwertyoruiop’s presentation. This is very informative about the pain inflicted on the InfoSec attacker. In French we say: “Cela send le vécu”.
I can confirm that the people I have worked with have also suffered from this problem. However, the situation does not mean that iOS cannot be broken, and for me this makes the task even more interesting for those who maintain their positions.
In his statement, @pod2g mentions how many of his fellow security researchers have taken the path of least resistance, trying to attack the Android platform instead.
Why? Because it’s easier; iOS security has been strengthened from every angle, making it more burdensome. Even seasoned jailbreak creator CoolStar from the Odyssey Team says jailbreaking has become too stressful for her today.
However, in a more positive vein, @pod2g acknowledged that despite iOS’s unprecedented security improvements, the mobile operating system is far from immune. It just makes it harder to try and crack it.
The jailbreak community still doesn’t have access to a public jailbreak of iOS 15, despite the fact that iOS 16 was only released last month (except for palera1n, which is really only for developers and only supports older devices affected by the checkm8 exploit). bootrom).
Several teams are currently working on an iOS 15 jailbreak, however the release timeline remains unclear as iOS 15 jailbreaks are rootless and the dependencies used to develop the tweak and implement the tweak need to be updated to support this new dynamic before the jailbreak is ready.. for the general public.
As another glimmer of hope, Todesco showed off a jailbreak on an iOS 16 device at his Hexacon presentation, however this was likely a private attempt meant to test the concept and not be made public.
It’s always nice to hear from experienced iPhone hackers, only wish it had happened under happier circumstances. In any case, the wait for the jailbreak continues…