Checkra1n first picked up support for iOS & iPadOS 14 exactly one month ago starting today, but with a significant caveat in that it would initially support only A8-A9X devices. At the time, the team said it would work to add A10 support “in coming weeks,” and now that four weeks have passed since the announcement, it may come as no surprise that team member Luca Todesco addressed the community this afternoon via Twitter.
Now before your heart skips a beat on that subject, we’ll come right out and say that the latest comment contains good news. It seems that progress has been made in adding support for A10 devices running iOS & iPadOS 14, and Todesco expects a public release for this new support to happen quite soon:
In the Tweet, Todesco says, “Worked on A10 checkra1n with the team today, we have the exploit integrated within the boot flow and SEP patching done, so we are quite close to a release.”
A few hours later, Todesco posted a teaser video of a checkra1n pwned device running iOS 14.1:
For those unaware, the A10 chip can be found in both the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus. The slightly upgraded A10X chip can be found in both sizes of the 2017 iPad Pro.
As for why checkra1n didn’t support all iOS & iPadOS 14 devices out of the box, that answer is a bit more complicated. Apple didn’t actually (and can’t) patch the hardware-based checkm8 bootrom exploit that powers the jailbreak, but rather the company added a security mitigation to SEPOS on A10 and newer devices that can cause the device to panic if the handset’s secure enclave receives a request to decrypt on-device user data.
The checkra1n team’s recent work circumvents this nuisance on A10 devices, but it allegedly won’t be as easy to apply the same patches to newer A11-equipped devices like the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X. This is indeed unfortunate for those who have one of these handsets, but it doesn’t slam the door shut on the possibility that checkra1n could eventually receive support in the future. In a more positive light, it may just take more time…
More information about the current state of the checkra1n jailbreak can be found in our F.A.Q. post published last month, just in case you were interested in the finer details.
At first glance, it appears as if the checkra1n team has succeeded in its effort to deliver a promise made to the jailbreak community just one month ago. How much longer it will take remains a mystery, but regardless, it’s comforting to know that progress has been made and that a light exists at the end of the tunnel.
If you have an A10-equipped device, are you excited that you might soon be able to jailbreak iOS & iPadOS 14 with the checkra1n jailbreak? Let us know in the comments section down below.
