Alibaba Researchers 'Perfectly' Jailbreak iOS 11.2.1

Fans of jailbroken Apple devices no longer need to slug it out with their outdated iOS 10 devices because security researchers working for Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba have found a way to jailbreak iOS 11.2 and 11.2.1. By exploiting a vulnerability in the software, an untethered iPhone can be jailbroken and loaded with software from the Cydia software repository.

Researchers at Alibaba's subsidiary Secure Pandora Labs announced the news in a blog post, noting that the jailbreak was performed while the iPhone X was untethered, and supports the software Cydia. According to research firm head Song Yang, the jailbreak was described as "perfect" and "different" from other recent examples.

"Although iOS 11.2 fixes some security issues, we confirmed on the day of release that the new version will still be able to jailbreak," Yang said. "Although we soon escaped iOS 11.2 perfectly, we were limited to security research purposes, So it does not provide jailbreak tools."

Pandora Labs was established in this year, mainly in the field of mobile security. Currently, the laboratory has more than 10 researchers who recently demonstrated the perfect jailbreak iOS 11.1 during the Prophet Innovation Conference held back in Nov. 17.

The technical details of the iOS 11.2 jailbreak were not shared as the firm says it was limited to "security research purposes," and has no plans to release any jailbreaking tools. While this certainly makes it hard for other hackers to use the same exploit, it was revealed that they can take advantage of a memory buffer overflow bug to cause a kernel panic.

Jailbreaking has been in decline over recent months with a number of major Cydia app repositories shutting down. While some have already given up on the activity, some hackers and users still prefer to have more control over their devices even if it means missing out on many of the latest iOS updates such as the iOS 11 and its later versions.