Android on iPhone: Apple’s iPhone is one hell of a device to crack. Since its inception, no one has been able to surpass the security of the iOS environment easily. Above all, the iOS environment is considered the most secured and closely guarded secret. Apple has recently worked on a new security system called “Rootless,” to improve security aspects of iOS. This process itself has made jailbreaking even more difficult to do.
Jailbreaking is the process of removing the restrictions imposed by the company. This can be done through an exploit or vulnerability in hardware or software. This process is similar to the rooting process in Android. Jailbreaking an iPhone just permits you to modify some aspects of iOS. For instance, by jailbreaking the iPhone, you can do things like removing Bluetooth Restrictions, Accessing Root Directory etc. However, you can’t change or remove iOS by using this process. Whereas in Android, you can remove an Android version and install other versions easily by the means of unlocking the boot loader.
Android on iPhone
Unlike Android, Apple’s iOS environment is a closed source. That’s the reason why you can’t be able to see other operating systems like Android running on an iPhone except for iOS. However, this impossible task was made possible by a hacker. A person named “VIVINET” allegedly made this thing possible and he even uploaded a video showcasing the iPhone SE running Android successfully.
According to his words, he made it possible through an exploit called checkm8 vulnerability.
What is Checkm8 Vulnerability?
Checkm8 Vulnerability is a permanent un-patchable boot ROM exploit. An iOS researcher with the Twitter handle @axi0mX announced the release of this new exploit. According to his posted tweet, this exploit is a “permanent unpatchable bootrom exploit,” capable of affecting devices from 4S up to the iPhone X. The name checkm8 refers to checkmate in chess. It means the game has ended.
EPIC JAILBREAK: Introducing checkm8 (read “checkmate”), a permanent unpatchable bootrom exploit for hundreds of millions of iOS devices.
Most generations of iPhones and iPads are vulnerable: from iPhone 4S (A5 chip) to iPhone 8 and iPhone X (A11 chip). https://t.co/dQJtXb78sG
— ax🔥🌸mX (@axi0mX) September 27, 2019
In other words, this exploit can bypass security measures in iPhones to an extent that users can install Android on iPhone by using it. A bootrom is a read-only memory chip containing the very first code to load when a system starts up. When the phone boots up, this is the program that invokes first. Since it, the first program to load before OS, finding exploits in it can bypass the total security imposed by Apple. @axi0mX even shared the code exploit on GitHub. This exploit is the backbone of this process.
MIUI 11 on Apple iPhone SE
The procedure to do the installation and the devoloper name was not revealed. However, he revealed that he has plans to upload the procedure soon. He even uploaded a video on YouTube showcasing the bootup animation of MIUI appearing on iPhone SE. According to his words, the procedure was “not a big hack and jailbreak” and he also revealed that the checkm8 vulnerability did much of the hard work. He used the exploit from @axi0mX and made the impossible possible. Check out the video he posted on his YouTube channel.
He also revealed that he is working on better compatible drivers to make it more stable. According to him, this procedure can also be reverted easily. In other words, if one doesn’t like MIUI on their iPhones they can revert to iOS easily. This procedure can come in handy for people who want to try Android but doesn’t want to charge their iPhone. We will upload the full procedure as soon as it is revealed by the developer.
For more interesting news and reveals related to tech, follow us on our telegram channel. We haunt interesting news every day on the Internet.