iOS 17.0 – 17.4 Jailbreak News (A12+) – Best iOS Versions & What To Expect

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March 21, 2024

iOS 17.0 - 17.4 Jailbreak News (A12+) - Best iOS Versions & What To Expect

Jailbreaking iOS 17 will certainly be a major achievement on newer devices, particularly the A12+ ones, such as the iPhone 14, iPhone 13, iPhone 11, etc.

Right now these devices can be jailbroken on iOS 16.0 up to iOS 16.5 and even iOS 16.5.1 in some cases, but for iOS 17 we have several challenges that we need to overcome before a full jailbreak can be released.

In this article, we will see exactly what an iOS 17 jailbreak requires, what are the best iOS versions to be on right now, and what to expect in the near future.

Why are A12+ devices so hard to jailbreak on iOS 17?

It’s not that iOS 17 is particularly bad, but these devices have extra security features that just don’t exist on older devices.

On top of that, security vulnerabilities and exploits powerful enough to create a jailbreak are much harder to find nowadays, especially since it’s no longer enough to have one powerful kernel exploit to build a jailbreak.

Nowadays it takes a full chain of several powerful exploits to get the job done on A12+ which makes these devices harder to jailbreak overall.

iOS 17 and SPTM / TXM

iOS 17 introduced two new security features that are pretty much intertwined SPTM (Secure Page Table Monitor) and TXM (Trusted Execution Monitor). Previous iOS versions used PPL or Page Protection Layer which is a security technique aimed at protecting the user space memory from exploits trying to modify it.

PPL essentially makes your tweaks stop dead in their tracks, even if you have a kernel exploit and the kernel is already patched in some way. This significantly reduces the capability of kernel exploits when used for jailbreaking.

PPL has been technically available since A11 (iPhone X and iPhone 8), but we have a SecureROM (BootROM) exploit for those which means we can patch ANYTHING Apple adds.

So PPL absolutely needs to be patched if we want our jailbreak to be able to do jailbreak things like loading tweaks, themes, etc. On A12+ this patch would require a proper exploit capable of doing this which is trickier to find than you’d think.

So what is SPTM?

On iOS 17 and A15+, you no longer have PPL, you have SPTM (Secure Page Table Monitor) which is an improved version of PPL, more powerful than ever but that pretty much aims to do the same thing – protect the memory from unauthorized changes even when the kernel has been compromised.

This would obviously require yet another very powerful, potentially expensive exploit in addition to the kernel exploit and the PPL bypass (assuming you want your jailbreak to work on A12+ and not only A15+).

TL;DR

iOS 17, and particularly A15+ devices have an enhanced protection mechanism called SPTM that works with TXM to protect the userland memory from unauthorized changes (read tweaks), and this new feature also requires its separate powerful exploit to bypass for a jailbreak to be made.

The CVE-2024-23225 vulnerability and what to expect

With the release of iOS 17.4 on March 5th, 2024, Apple also published the patch log/security content which shows a particularly nasty-looking vulnerability CVE-2024-23225.

Apple’s description is as follows:

Impact: An attacker with arbitrary kernel read and write capability may be able to bypass kernel memory protections. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited.
Apple iOS 17.4 Security Content

From this security content, we can see that the vulnerability particularly targes memory protections and it has been used in the wild which means it’s part of a larger exploit chain, such as a jailbreak or an APT (Advanced Persistent Threat – Malware).

Vulnerabilities used in the wild tend to be pretty powerful because they are usually used in highly sophisticated attacks against high-profile victims, governmental or otherwise.

Apple is rather quick to issue patches for these but the vulnerabilities themselves could very well be used for peaceful jailbreak purposes.

If I had to guess, I’d say CVE-2024-23225 is either a PPL or an SPTM bypass which would help jailbreak development tremendously once we figure out where exactly the vulnerability is, either through diffing the changes or via a lucky PoC or paper release.

The affected iOS versions are iOS 17.3.1 and below, so I would highly recommend staying on these instead of updating to iOS 17.4 which patches the vulnerability and is a particularly bad version to be on.

Should you DelayOTA update to iOS 17.2.1?

I get this question a lot. Since iOS 17.2.1 is available for update through DelayOTA, should I update from iOS 16 or 15 or any other version to iOS 17.2.1?

On one hand, iOS 17.2.1 is one of the versions affected by the CVE-2024-23225 vulnerability which is great, but updating from iOS 15 or iOS 16, regardless of which version is NOT RECOMMENDED.

Updating from iOS 14 or lower is a matter of preference. iOS 14 and older versions have started to have pretty bad App Support due to many apps nowadays requiring iOS 16 at minimum.

This puts iOS 14 and below users in a dilemma: should you stay on your jailbroken iOS 13 or iOS 14 device but miss out on many apps you probably use but have stopped supporting your device, or do you update to 17.2.1 and patiently wait for a jailbreak?

There is no wrong answer. It boils down to what you want or need more. For me, App Support is more important than jailbreaking, especially if almost all apps are no longer supported.

Just do know that the DelayOTA window for iOS 17.2.1 is ending on April 21, 2024. You have until then to decide, but iOS 17.2.1 will not be jailbroken anytime soon so the wait will be long. At least you have all the apps, I guess.

What devices can you jailbreak on iOS 17 today?

Depending on what device you currently have, you may be able to jailbreak iOS 17.0 – 17.4.

Even if you don’t have one of these devices yet, if you are planning to buy a new toy device to have it jailbroken and play around with it, one of the devices below would be a very good choice particularly because you can jailbreak them all the way up to iOS 17.4

I am talking, of course, about the checkm8-compatible devices. There’s a very small range of iPad models that received both the iPadOS 17 update, AND are checkm8 compatible.

These devices are compatible with the PaleRa1n jailbreak particularly because they use the A10 and A10X chips which fall between the A8-A11 supported range of PaleRa1n.

Recommendation

If you are looking to get a new iPad to play around with jailbreaking, get one of these models and you will be able to jailbreak all the way up until iOS 18 comes around and will very likely put an end to PaleRa1n for good.

Here are the currently jailbreakable devices on iOS 17 / iPadOS 17:

iPad (6th generation) (A10)
iPad (7th generation) (A10)

iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation) (A10X)
iPad Pro 10.5-inch (A10X)

You can check if your device is currently jailbreakable and on what iOS versions using our Jailbreak Tools page.

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About the author

GeoSn0w

An iOS and Jailbreak enthusiast who has been around for quite some time in the community. I’ve developed my own jailbreaks before and I am currently maintaining iSecureOS, one of the first iOS Anti-Malware tools for jailbroken devices. I also run iDevice Central on YouTube with over 146.000 Subscribers! Thank you for being part of this awesome community.