Reports have repeatedly spread out about the iOS 12 Jailbreak. The more rumors are surfacing the more iOS 12 jailbreak anticipators are getting interested on when and how their much-awaited iOS jailbreak will ever take place.
Billionaire 365 hints that the latest report on iOS 12 Jailbreak declared that iPhone X has finally been jailbroken. The report also stated that someone managed to find a second stage to the exploit chain. What exactly does an exploit chain mean and how can they confidently say that iPhone X is indeed vulnerable.
In attempts to reduce the number if not to completely eliminate the iPhone jailbreak, Apple is doing everything they can to strengthen their system security. They have increased efforts in making sure that their operating system will no longer be jailbreakable.
The previous versions of iPhones were equipped with security techniques such as DEP Data Execution Prevention, NC Byte, Stack Cookies and a whole lot more. However, the mentioned techniques were not enough that jailbreakers managed to exploit their vulnerabilities.
With the help of their own security researchers as well as freelance researchers who report their discoveries directly to Apple, the Cupertino tech giant managed to find a way to prevent hackers and jailbreakers in exploiting the vulnerabilities of the next batches of iPhone releases.
The iPhone releases from iPhone X onwards were equipped with a new security technique; an architecture which has PAC by default on A12 chips. PAC or Pointer Authentication Code is a new layer of security that prevents a device from being hacked.
PAC was specially designed to prevent users from the doing ROP or Return Oriented Programming. ROP means reusing the parts of the binary to use it against itself.
Since PAC was authenticated, reusing the binary against itself is impossible making it hard to jailbreak the PAC equipped devices such as iPhone X. PAC then became a very serious problem for iOS 12 jailbreakers.
The jailbreaker problems with PAC finally came to an end when Min (Spark) Zheng posted a tweet saying that the A12 core with PAC is no longer a problem with POP, Port-oriented Programming. The statement meant a very huge achievement as PAC is a very complicated mechanism and is very hard to bypass, according to Info Security.
A12 core (with PAC) is not a problem for POP~!!! https://t.co/zbkjrxKY3H — Min(Spark) Zheng (@SparkZheng) January 15, 2019
Zheng's discovery is indeed a breakthrough as it marks the first time that PAC is defeated on A12 chipset. This means that Apple's effort to prevent the iOS 12 jailbreak using PAC is still not enough and that jailbreakers are getting really close to building the full iPhone X jailbreak.
