Paul Morris on December 12, 2017, 2:34 am

iOS 11.1.2 tfp0 Exploit For Potential Jailbreak Released By Google’s Ian Beer

Google’s Project Zero team member Ian Beer has once again stayed true to his word with the release of a kernel-level bug for iOS 11.1.2 and below.

Beer originally teased the bug in IOSurface a number of days ago with the first and only tweet at that time from his new Twitter account. Six days later and he has taken to Twitter again to confirm “iOS 11.1.2, now with more kernel debugging”.

Beer has once again taken to Twitter to make the announcement, with the initial tweet simply saying “iOS 11.1.2, now with more kernel debugging”, and a direct link to the bug and all associated information on the Chromium.org website here. That tweet was then followed up almost immediately with another one confirming that the published tfp0-level bug “should work for all devices.” The security researcher from Google’s Project Zero also confirmed that he has only been able to test on the devices that he has access to, which in this instance is stipulated as iPhone 7, iPhone 6s, and iPod touch 6.

Of course, as we have pointed out over the last few days, and as developers like Jonathan Levin has been keen to reiterate, this is not the same as a fully functioning jailbreak, and cannot be used by an average Joe as such. We’ve already confirmed that neither Ian Beer nor Jonathan Levin is actually working on putting together a jailbreak, but that the work of each individual gets someone with the technical knowledge and capability a huge head start should they wish to work on pushing something out into the community to support 64-bit devices running iOS 11.1.2 or below.

Levin has recently teased his process explorer tool which is likely to be part of his announced jailbreak toolkit. If there is someone out there with the necessary knowledge and ability to take everything that’s literally been put on a plate and turn it into something wonderful and usable for the eager jailbreak community, then may they please step forward and take up the challenge.

As it currently stands, we have the start of a jailbreak toolkit and a kernel-level bug for iOS 11.1.2 devices and below. We’d say that’s a fairly good starting point for someone.

(Source: @i41nbeer [Twitter])