Just a few days ago, developer @_p0up0u_ released an important open-source project in the jailbreak community.

The new KFD project includes two major kernel vulnerabilities compatible with iOS 15.0 up to iOS 16.5, their appropriate exploits as well and writeups for those interested in iOS Security Research.

For the jailbreak community, this means that we have a huge piece of the puzzle for the next jailbreak tool.

If you are running iOS 15.0 up to iOS 16.5, or iOS 16.6 Beta 1, you may soon be able to get a jailbreak thanks to this release. Sure, the kernel exploits are not enough on their own, but the community is hard at work to get a PPL bypass going too. Once that is available, a full jailbreak should be doable.

Mandela Pro – A Cowabunga fork for iOS 16.2 – iOS 16.6 on A12+ Devices

Many of you probably remember the Cowabunga application that was made using the MacDirtyCow exploit for iOS 14.0 up to iOS 16.1.2 on all devices. Cowabunga was patched in iOS 16.2.

Cowabunga was a tweaking/theming platform that allowed you to customize your home screen icons, change sounds, fonts, notification banner colors, passcode keys, carrier names, and many more without being jailbroken.

Cowabunga was quite elegant. It allowed lots of tweaks and themes to be installed without having to be jailbroken and applications would not trigger jailbreak detection with Cowabunga installed.

It looks like developers @sourcelocation and @bomberfish77 are working on Mandela Pro, a Cowabunga fork that supports iOS 16.2 up to iOS 16.5 and iOS 16.6 Beta 1 on all devices, including iPhone 14, iPhone 13, etc.

They could make this possible thanks to the KFD exploit released by @_p0up0u_ and a fork of it that allows file overwrites on the device.

Once this is complete, you will be able to experience Cowabunga’s tweaks and themes on iOS 16.2 and newer too! This is pretty neat while we wait for a full jailbreak to be made.

Advantages of using Cowabunga / Mandela Pro versus a full jailbreak

Cowabunga and Mandela Pro are not jailbreaks. These apps use a jailbreak exploit to modify the device’s UI, etc. but they are not jailbreaks per se.

Here are all the PROs and CONs of using Cowabunga and Mandela Pro versus a traditional full jailbreak, or even a rootless jailbreak.

As you can see, while Cowabunga and Mandela Pro are far more limited than a full jailbreak, the fact that apps installed from the App Store don’t complain about it and don’t detect it as a jailbreak is a huge advantage.

For many jailbreakers, the Jailbreak Detection in the apps they use day by day is a major turn-off as they can’t use the apps they need while jailbroken. Cowabunga and Mandela Pro don’t have this kind of issue.

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