Apple on Monday announced iOS & iPadOS 18 during the company’s WWDC 2024 Keynote, showcasing a plethora of new features for just about every platform the brand sells.
One thing that we were very eager to find out was whether Apple would finally kill off all checkm8 bootrom exploit-vulnerable devices with this software update by not supporting them, just like how all checkm8-vulnerable iPhones didn’t get iOS 17 support last year. Apple did, however, continue supporting a small subset of older iPads running iPadOS 17 with software updates.
So that got the gears turning… would Apple support any checkm8-vulnerable iPads with iPadOS 18? While it seems incredibly unlikely, it turns out that iPadOS 18 still supports at least one checkm8-vulnerable iPad.
The checkm8 exploit also works with other types of hardware as well, including Apple TVs, so we’ll get into which devices are still supported as of the latest software updates launching this Fall below.
Jailbreak commentator @MasterMike88 took to the palera1n Discord server to reveal exactly which devices those still are, and from what we can gather, the list isn’t that long, but still notable:
iPadOS 18
– iPad (7th generation)
tvOS 18
– Apple TV HD
– Apple TV 4K (1st generation)Other
– HomePod (1st generation)
– T2 chip-equipped Macs
The checkm8 bootrom exploit is a hardware-based exploit, which means that Apple can’t patch it with software updates. They can, however, put more and more barricades in front of jailbreak tools that wish to exploit it.
This is the reason why the palera1n jailbreak is still maintained to this day, even supporting iPadOS 17 on those devices that support the checkm8 exploit, and certain Apple TVs running tvOS that are vulnerable to the checkm8 exploit.
Having said all this, the palera1n jailbreak has been confirmed broken on iPadOS 18 at this point in time, which means that further updates to the tool would be required to get it working on the last iPad that can use it with iPadOS 18 — the iPad (7th generation). The same applies to Apple TVs running tvOS 18.
The checkm8 bootrom exploit is known for affecting Apple chips as new as the A11 series. It doesn’t work on A12 and later, as the newer architecture brings security hardening that makes developing jailbreaks more challenging.
At this time, while iPadOS 17 can be jailbroken with palera1n on certain older iPads, there isn’t yet a jailbreak for A12 and newer devices for iOS & iPadOS 17. Security researchers need what’s called a SPTM bypass to make that happen, and it has yet to be released.
We expect that while palera1n could be updated to support the iPad (7th generation), Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K (1st generation) running iPadOS 18 and tvOS 18, any newer devices are unlikely to have a jailbreak for some time, at least until someone cracks the security hardening.
Admittedly, I’m surprised that Apple continued to support a checkm8-vulnerable iPad with the release of iPadOS 18, but that’s definitely good news for an even smaller subset of jailbreakers.