Hacker shows jailbroken iPhone X running iOS 13.1.1 in verbose boot mode

Developer Luca Todesco and hacker axi0mX jailbroken an iPhone X with iOS 13.1.1. The developers did this with the recently published bootrom exploit Checkm8. According to axi0mX, jailbreaking only took two seconds.

Axi0mX showed the cracked iPhone in a video on Twitter. After the device was started in dfu mode, the jailbreak took only two seconds, according to the developer. It is striking that the iPhone in question runs on iOS 13.1.1, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system. This iOS version was released over the weekend and thus seems to have already been cracked on older iPhone models. This is probably a ‘tethered’ jailbreak. This means that the device can only be started via the redsn0w application on a computer.

After the device was cracked, axi0mX made the iPhone automatically start in verbose boot mode. In this mode, the iPhone displays exactly what the device is doing when it starts up. This can be used to find and fix any problems. This is only possible with deep tweaks to the core iOS.

The iPhone X in verbose mode. Photo via Twitter

Axi0mX last week published an exploit for Apple devices with A5 through A11 chips. This affects all iOS devices from the iPhone 4s to the iPhone X. This is a bootrom leak, which means that the exploit cannot be patched with software. The Checkm8 exploit was not a “full” jailbreak with Cydia. Instead, Checkm8 is currently mostly a developer tool. This is the first bootrom exploit since the 2010 iPhone 4.

Since its publication, prominent jailbreak developers such as CoolStar and Pwn20wnd have expressed interest in the new exploit. The first full jailbreaks using Checkm8 are expected to come online in the near future.