Limera1n

This is geohot's latest jailbreak utility. It uses an undisclosed bootrom exploit by geohot and an undisclosed kernel exploit found by comex to achieve an untethered jailbreak on newer devices.

• iPhone 3GS
• iPhone 4
• iPod touch 3G
• iPod touch 4G
• iPad
• Apple TV 2G (However it's current usefulness is debatable)

It has been demonstrated multiple times by geohot, using blog posts on his now private blog. Geohot showed off a high-res picture of Cydia on an iPhone 4. He displayed an iPod touch 3G with an untethered jailbreak that met MuscleNerd's requirements for a good video. In addition, he took a picture of Cydia and blackra1n icons on his iPad's SpringBoard.

limera1n was released to the public on October 9, 2010, delaying the release of greenpois0n using the SHAtter exploit. greenpois0n has been rewritten to use the same exploit that limera1n uses. It only supports Windows and Mac OS X at the moment, and there are some devices with issues.

Limera1n also installs a hacktivation dynamic library (.dylib) to /usr/lib, no matter if the device is properly activated by iTunes or not. This is lazy and can pose some issues (such as Push Donor users having to restore their device). It's recommended to properly remove this dylib only if you can activate via iTunes. A guide to do so can be found here.

Release text

limera1n, 6 months in the making

iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3G, iPad, iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G
4.0-4.1 and beyond+++
limera1n is unpatchable
untethered thanks to jailbreakme star comex
brought to you by geohot
hacktivates
Mac coming in 7 years
donations keep support alive

zero pictures of my face

Credit

• geohot - the program itself, and bootrom exploit.
• comex - userland exploit that allows limera1n to run untethered.

Changelog

Version	Release time	MD5 Hash	Change comment
BETA 1	9 Oct 2010 XX:XX GMT	2f2b09a6ed5c5613d5361d8a9d0696b6	First release.
BETA 2	10 Oct 2010 XX:XX GMT	a70dccb3dfc0e505687424184dc3d1ce	Fixed kernel patching magic. Rerun BETA2+ over BETA1.
BETA 3	10 Oct 2010 XX:XX GMT	81730090f7de1576268ee8c2407c3d35	Fixed an issue with iPhone 3GS (new bootrom)
BETA 4	10 Oct 2010 XX:XX GMT	d901c4b3a544983f095b0d03eb94e4db	Uninstall fixed, respring fixed
RC1	11 Oct 2010 XX:XX GMT	0622d99ffe4c25f75c720a689853845f	out of beta! afc2, reliability improvements, no reboot for cydia, 2kb smaller
RC1b	11 Oct 2010 XX:XX GMT	fc6f7d696a57c3baede49bdff8a7f43f	addresses an install issue, mainly with iPads
Final	11 Oct 2010 23:XX GMT	fc6f7d696a57c3baede49bdff8a7f43f	(same as RC1b)

Technical Information

Basics

• limera1n uses a different exploit to SHAtter.
• limera1n uses a bootrom exploit to achieve the tethered jailbreak and unsigned code execution.
• limera1n uses a userland exploit to make it untethered, which was developed by comex.
• limera1n uses a hacktivation dylib to activate, even on devices already activated by iTunes

Exploits

Details of the bootrom exploit to follow.

Process

The jailbreak appears to execute something like the following (in no particular order):

• In recovery1,

"setenv debug-uarts 1
setenv auto-boot false
saveenv"

• In DFU, it uploads a payload.
• In recovery2, it uploads another payload and its ramdisk.

"setenv auto-boot true
 reset
 geohot done"

Interesting Messages

"geohot black is the new purple"

"blackra1n start: %d current IRQ mask is %8.8X
usb irq disabled...shhh
fxns found @ %8.8X %8.8X
found iBoot @ %8.8X
i'm back from IRQland...
3g detected, kicking nor
nor kicked
memcpy done
iBoot restored!!!
found command table @ %8.8X
cmd_geohot added
time to pray...%8.8X"

"2.2X  send command(%d): %s
send exploit!!!
sent data to copy: %X
 sent shellcode: %X has real length %X
never freed: %X
sent fake data to timeout: %X
 sent exploit to heap overflow: %X
 sending file with length: 0x%X Mingw runtime failure:
  VirtualQuery failed for %d bytes at address %p      Unknown pseudo relocation protocol version %d.
    Unknown pseudo relocation bit size %d."

Controversy

The release of this jailbreak was specifically designed to pressure Chronic Dev into not releasing the SHAtter exploit, instead implementing the limera1n exploit into greenpois0n. After releasing limera1n, releasing SHAtter would uselessly disclose another bootrom exploit to Apple.

geohot's rationale is that Apple already discovered, through internal testing, the limera1n exploit, making it very likely that it will be fixed in the next bootrom. Because iBoot code is present both in the bootrom and firmware, and because firmware is refreshed much more often that bootrom code, any fix in this code branch would appear first in firmware. geohot observed his limera1n exploit was closed in firmware and concluded that it would almost certainly be fixed in the next bootrom revision, whereas SHAtter still has a chance of remaining useful in the 5th generation iPhone should it not be disclosed at this time.

limera1n's untethered userland exploit for iOS 4.0 and 4.1 was obtained by geohot under questionable circumstances from comex. comex did in fact end up giving his approval for the exploit to be included in limera1n as of beta 2.

External Links

• Picture of limera1n in action
• Official domain
• The iPhone Wiki Mirror
• Limera1n RC Beta2 Dump on Mediafire provided by iH8sn0w.
• Veence's explanation for release