A new unpatchable flaw in Apple chips opens the door to an iPhone jailbreak

A company that sells spyware and hacking tools to government agencies has published details of a vulnerability in Apple chips that can potentially help hackers unlock older iPhones. This release opens the door for other researchers who specialize in finding iOS vulnerabilities, such as those working for governments or their contractors, to develop effective hacks for iPhones, provided they can find additional vulnerabilities to chain together with this one. This could help security researchers develop a so-called iPhone jailbreak, a technique to hack into Apple’s mobile operating system and remove all the restrictions the company puts on it. The release is also a reminder that while Apple has made iPhones extremely hard to hack, there are and will always be vulnerabilities that sophisticated hackers can take advantage of to break in. On Friday, Paradigm Shift, an offensive cybersecurity company based in Barcelona , published a blog post about the vulnerability, which it dubbed “usbliter8.” The company also published a proof of concept that shows how to exploit the vulnerability, which requires physical access to the target phone. The flaw and related exploit affect iPhones that have Apple-made chips A12 and A13, which were released in 2018 and 2019, and are included in older iPhones such as the XS, XR and up to the iPhone 11. …