Thursday morning bore witness to interesting news for anybody who finds themselves intrigued by iPhone and iPad security research.
Talented hacker and security researcher @pattern_f_ took to X (formerly Twitter) early this morning to share what appears to be a PPL bypass that works on iOS 16.3.1.
The accomplishment came with the tagline “after months of hard work,” which undoubtedly speaks to the complexities of finding and utilizing these kinds of things.
If you’ve been keeping up with your jailbreak news recently, then you’d know the only thing keeping an iOS & iPadOS 16 jailbreak from being developed for A12 and newer handsets is the lack of an available PPL bypass.
As discussed in a post shared to /r/jailbreak Thursday morning, @pattern_f_’s work certainly does appear to imply a PPL bypass for iOS & iPadOS 16. This was further corroborated by hacker and developer @tihmstar asking if @pattern_f_planned to release the PPL bypass so that a jailbreak could be made, in which @pattern_f_ promptly replied, “no plan yet.”
It seems unlikely that this PPL bypass will see the light of day, however the language chosen including the use of the word “yet” instead of a direct “no” leaves some wiggle room for interpretation, and perhaps even hope. But we wouldn’t recommend getting your hopes up.
The last time we saw a PPL bypass for iOS & iPadOS 16 was CVE-2023-41981 back in September when iOS & iPadOS 17 first launched, but even that PPL bypass hasn’t been publicized.
Currently, the only known public kernel exploit for iOS & iPadOS 16 is kernel file descriptor (kfd) for iOS & iPadOS 16.0-16.5 and 16.6 beta 1. A PPL bypass, if released, would potentially make kfd an exploit for jailbreaking. Currently, without a PPL bypass, kfd is used for hacks and add-ons such as those employed by Misaka, Picasso, and PureKFD.
The lack of any jailbreak for newer arm64e devices running iOS & iPadOS 16 and newer has left many people to abandon jailbreaking altogether, while many others with a love of iPhone hacking have flocked to TrollStore to perma-sign hacked apps instead.
It will indeed be interesting to see if anything materializes from this, but our best guess is not. Those looking to jailbreak newer iOS & iPadOS 16.0+ devices will likely need to continue waiting.
