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Limera1n
This is geohot's latest jailbreak utility. It uses and undisclosed bootrom exploit 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
- AppleTV (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.
Contents
Release text
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
Credit
- geohot - the program itself, and bootrom exploit.
- comex - userland exploit that allows limera1n to run untethered.
Changelog
| 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"
"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.
