Successful Untethered Jailbreak of iOS 11.2.1 on iPhone X Reported

Security researchers have successfully jailbroken iOS 11.2 and iOS 11.2.1 on the iPhone X, according to a new report.

The jailbreak was reportedly carried out by researchers at Alibaba’s Pandora Labs, Redmond Pie reported. Pandora Labs Head Song Yang confirmed to the outlet that the iOS 11.2.1 jailbreak is untethered — meaning that the device doesn’t need to be re-jailbroken every time it’s restarted.

On the other hand, Yang noted that his team does not plan on releasing the iOS 11.2.1 jailbreak to the public. “Although iOS 11.2 fixes some security issues, we confirmed the new iOS will still be jailbroken on the first day it was released,” Yang said. “Although we were able to jailbreak iOS 11.2 quickly, we were limited to security research purposes, our team won’t provide any jailbreak tool.”

Alibaba Pandora Labs

It’s worth noting that iDrop News has not been able to independently verify the jailbreak, however. Beyond the initial report, Alibaba or Pandora Labs hasn’t published any additional details or concrete proof of the jailbreak beyond what’s contained within their own blog post. Namely, screenshots of code segments as well as a picture of the Cydia app on an iPhone X.

Reportedly, Pandora Labs is a small security outfit with about 10 permanent researchers which was established this year. They appear to be a sub-group of Alibaba JAQ Security, a small Chinese mobile and cyber security firm. According to Alibaba’s blog, the team has sent vulnerabilities to major tech companies like Apple, Google and Huawei.

There are, as always, reasons to believe that security firms could fake a jailbreak for publicity purposes. With that in mind, you should take any iOS jailbreaking-related news with a grain of salt until it’s been actually confirmed.

Other iOS 11 and iPhone X Jailbreaks

This isn’t the first time the iPhone X has been jailbroken, however. Back in November, Liang Chen of security firm KeenLab showed off a jailbroken iPhone X running iOS 11.1.1 at the Power of Community hacking conference in Seoul, South Korea.

Pandora Lab’s exploit follows closely on the heels of another iOS 11 jailbreak in the last few days. Earlier this week, a Google security researcher named Ian Beer promised to release a set of tools that could jailbreak an iPhone — and he delivered, Gizmodo reported. In that case, however, the exploit was for research purposes only and was strictly released as a tethered jailbreak. Still, enterprising jailbreakers are already getting to work converting it into a full iOS jailbreak tool.

Of course, there’s the very real question of whether iOS jailbreaks are even relevant anymore — especially in the wake of jailbreaking pioneers claiming that iOS jailbreaking is officially dead. In any case, the lack of relevance hasn’t stopped hackers and security researchers across the globe from trying.

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