Researchers Won $300,000 For Remotely Jailbreaking iPhone 13 Pro With iOS 15

A group of jailbreakers reportedly won $300,000 in cash prize at the annual Tianfu Cup hacking competition in China by remotely jailbreaking an iPhone 13 Pro with iOS 15.

The Tianfu Cup Hacking Competition is the Chinese counterpart to the Pwn2Own competitions in the US, which awards high prizes to researchers who defeat consumer devices and software. On the first day of the competition this year in China, a team reportedly secured a big prize by attacking an iPhone 13 Pro with iOS 15 iDownloadBlog reported. The Pangu team, best known for jailbreaking Apple hardware, successfully carried out the attack:

Remote jailbreak brings the highest prize money

There were three price levels associated with the iPhone 13 Pro: Remote Code Execution (RCE) was $120,000, and RCE with a sandbox outbreak was $180,000. The remote jailbreak price is $300,000.

iPhone 13 Pro

The iPhone is only one of several targets in the overall competition, which includes both Apple devices and products from other companies. Other targets include RCE attacks on Safari, which runs on both Intel and Apple M1 MacBook Pro models, a Synology NAS, a Xiaomi Mi 11 smartphone, Windows 10, and Google Chrome, to name just a few to call. It is likely that more successful attempts against Apple’s hardware and others will be reported before the competition officially ends.

But if you are waiting for a jailbreak, you will probably be disappointed. Details of the hack are unlikely to be released anytime soon. The competition guidelines require responsible disclosure and thus that the hack be reported to the companies or developers concerned so that they can fix it before it is publicly disclosed.