Hacker Releases ‘Unpatchable’ Jailbreak For All iOS Devices, iPhone 4s to iPhone X

Dubbed Checkm8, the exploit leverages unpatchable security
weaknesses in Apple’s Bootrom (SecureROM), the first
significant code that runs on an iPhone while booting, which, if
exploited, provides greater system-level access.

“EPIC JAILBREAK: Introducing checkm8 (read “checkmate”), a
permanent unpatchable bootrom exploit for hundreds of millions of
iOS devices,” said axi0mX while
announcing the publicly release of the exploit on Twitter.
^[1]

The new exploit came exactly a month after Apple released an
emergency patch
for another critical jailbreak
vulnerability that works on Apple devices including the iPhone
XS, XS Max, and XR and the 2019 iPad Mini and iPad Air, running iOS
12.4 and iOS 12.2 or earlier.

Since the bootrom exploits are hardware-level issues and can not
be patched without a hardware revision, a simple software update
can’t address the newly released bootrom exploit.

It should be noted that the Checkm8 exploit itself is not a full
jailbreak with Cydia, instead, is just an exploit which researchers
and jailbreak community can use to develop a fully working
jailbreak tool.

• Jailbreak and downgrade iPhone 3GS (new bootrom) with alloc8
  untethered bootrom exploit.
• Pwned DFU Mode with steaks4uce exploit for S5L8720
  devices.
• Pwned DFU Mode with limera1n exploit for S5L8920/S5L8922
  devices.
• Pwned DFU Mode with SHAtter exploit for S5L8930 devices.
• Dump SecureROM on S5L8920/S5L8922/S5L8930 devices.
• Dump NOR on S5L8920 devices.
• Flash NOR on S5L8920 devices.
• Encrypt or decrypt hex data on a connected device in pwned DFU
  Mode using its GID or UID key.

axi0mX also notes that his exploit can not be performed
remotely. Instead, it can only be triggered over USB and requires
physical access.

The jailbreak only works on iPhones running Apple’s A5 and A11
chipsets and does not work on the latest two chipsets, i.e., A12
and A13.

^[2][3]