For a while, hackers are able to jailbreak iPhones because of the vulnerability they discovered in iOS 12.4. One so proud of it that he shared a free public jailbreak to mock Apple.
Gone are the days that people will hire hackers to jailbreak their iPhones so they can install third-party apps that cannot be found in the App Store. After all, there are so many apps in the store - free and paid, that one seriously do not need to anymore. However, it's still quite interesting to note that a hacker still can do this, because of a bug found in iOS 12.4.
But no more, Apple showed these hackers just what it could do by taking care of the bug, releasing iOS 12.4.1. Apple somehow mocked the hacker too with this update, thanking him for the release. The company mentioned Pwn20wnd, the hacker that offered the free jailbreak publicly. "We would like to acknowledge @Pwn20wnd for their assistance," the company's statement on the security update read.
This is a far cry from how Apple reacted to the time when the flaw was made public by the hacker. At the time, no reps replied to the issue, even though there was an assumption that the company will address this in no time. The fans are not disappointed.
It is interesting to note that iOS 12.4, just reintroduced the bug that was already fixed in iOS 12.3 already as reported by Vice, leading to all this fiasco. Even though they probably did not to have their phone jailbroken, it can be remembered too that several iPhone users took to Twitter that they applied the Pwn20wnd jailbreak on their phones.
More than just making sure jailbreaking is no longer possible, Apple's release of the 12.4.1 reduces the general risk that iPhone users faced with regard to hacking.
One security researcher has revealed that a hacker could easily take advantage of this vulnerability to create a malicious app for users to download, which is in reality, designed to steal data from the other apps stored in the user's iPhone. This certainly exposes billions of Apple users to risk, if they so decide to have their phones jailbroken suddenly.
According to Ayman El Hajjar, the goal of a jailbreak in "is to find a loophole in coding to jump over any restriction that the manufacturer has put on it." In essence, hackers are happy if users have their devices jailbroken because the "operating system security precautions are removed."
