Apple releases iOS 13.5.1, patching out the Unc0ver jailbreak

blognet   Tuesday, June 09, 2020   Comment  

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple has released iOS 13.5.1 today, which the company says “provides important security updates and is recommended for all users,” albeit without much detail in the change log. But as noted by Twitter account Apple Software Updates, the update is meant to patch out the kernel vulnerability used by the recent Unc0ver jailbreak.

Apple’s support page lays things out more clearly — the update was designed to prevent an application from being able to “execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges.” In other words, iOS 13.5.1 is designed to block jailbreaking.

The Unc0ver jailbreak was particularly notable in the iOS jailbreaking community because it was available on the then-current iOS 13.5, allowing users of the latest Apple devices to install new software features outside of Apple’s gated App Store.

While its certainly fun for iPhone enthusiasts to be able to have more customization options when it comes to their devices, jailbreaks like this can also represent big security holes in Apple’s software (something that the company leans on heavily as an advantage of iOS), so it’s not exactly a surprise to see that Apple has moved so quickly to patch the vulnerability.