You can now jailbreak an iPhone with an Android phone

Enlarge / Android teaches a young iPhone all about privilege escalation. (credit: Stblr / Reddit)

We all have our differences in the tech world-PC versus Mac, Android versus iOS, Emacs versus Vim. Occasionally, though, we can reach out to our friends across the aisle and realize that, at the end of the day, we're not all that different. Today's uplifting message of unity comes from the two main smartphone factions sharing in the joys of privilege escalation: it's now possible for a rooted Android phone to jailbreak iOS.

As first spotted by XDA Developers, Reddit user Stblr put the jailbreak puzzle pieces together when iOS jailbreaking exploit "Checkra1n" gained Linux support, which means it can also run on Android. If you have a rooted phone, you can plug your Android phone into your iPhone, run a few terminal commands, and break out of the Apple sandbox.

Checkra1n is the first jailbreak compatible with iOS 13, and it works on the iPhone 5 to iPhone X, running iOS 12.3 and up. It's only a temporary jailbreak, though, and will get wiped out once the phone reboots. This makes an ultra-portable device that can kick your iPhone back over into jailbreak mode pretty handy, and-for now at least-Android phones are still a bit smaller than laptops.

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