Apparently, Saurik has quit the jailbreak community and has no plans on updating Substrate. Who’s going to update Substrate for A12 devices now? Let’s find out below.
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Saurik quits jailbreak development amid Substrate issues
Yes, you read that right! Saurik, the godfather of jailbreaking, has ceased jailbreak development and urges all users to move on and forget that Cydia ever existed.
The old-guard developer posted a string of long-winded tweets on his Twitter handle. The tweet embedded below where he talks about Cydia and the jailbreak scene is by far the most hard-hitting.
Truly, jailbreaking should have stopped during the iOS 9 era, if not before; there is a reason essentially all of the reasonable developers left long ago and the community is largely now run by bullies. Everything that we do now just digs jailbreaking a deeper hole, full of fail.
— Jay Freeman (saurik) (@saurik) April 19, 2019
Despite his busy schedule, Saurik did get a few days worth of work done on a Substrate update. Surprisingly, PAC (Pointer Authentication Codes), which is difficult to bypass, wasn’t an issue whatsoever.
In fact, his problems were exacerbated by an all-new security mechanism called “Page Protection Layer” that Apple introduced in the A12 processor.
It adds an entirely new layer of codesigning – “physical map codesign” and makes code injection harder than before.
For A12, it (surprisingly to me) turned out Pointer Authentication Codes were not a problem; however, Apple built a new layer of codesign–"physical map codesign" (pmap_cs_*, largely missing from the XNU codebase)–as part of their "Page Protection Layer". https://t.co/lCMa8ulm19
— Jay Freeman (saurik) (@saurik) April 19, 2019
What next for Saurik?
To be honest, Saurik’s comments aren’t unfounded at all.
We all know jailbreaking is getting harder by the day and the perpetual stream of public exploits and vulnerabilities is drying up.
To make matters worse, the scene has been taken over kids and childish developers who like to spend their time flaming each other over trivial matters.
The man has been developing for the jailbreak community for more than a decade. So, it’s easy to understand why he’s sick to the stomach of anything related to iOS jailbreaking.
According to us, Saurik should consider leaving the scene altogether and open source Cydia Substrate and everything else.
Moving forward, this would allow fresh talent to come up and ensure the survival of the community he single-handedly founded years ago.
If you are an active jailbreak user, be sure to vote below and help Saurik decide his future course of action.
What should Saurik do now? #VOTE below
— Yalu Jailbreak (@Yalujb) April 19, 2019
Wen eta Substrate update?
Since Saurik has dropped the ball, plenty of reputed jailbreak developers have come forward with their offerings.
Each of these developers has a unique vision of how tweak support should be integrated into an iOS 12 jailbreak.
Coolstar and Pwn20wnd, both of whom have been at loggerheads of late, plan to incorporate Substitute in Electra and unc0ver jailbreak tools respectively.
Coolstar (@coolstarorg) has confirmed full A12 support for upcoming Electra12 jailbreak. #Electra #jailbreak pic.twitter.com/XPRschdzcS
— Yalu Jailbreak (@Yalujb) April 19, 2019
Ace hacker Jake James has also thrown his hat in the ring. He plans to add rootlessJB-style rudimentary tweak support to any of the existing jailbreak tools.
To all people who lost hope, there's something I'll try today (if Sam is available), which then can also be applied to unc0ver more easily, so you'll get something, maybe not the most stable thing but something. You definitely will be having more trouble if you update.
— Jake James (@Jakeashacks) April 19, 2019
No matter what happens in the future, we will keep you posted on the latest developments as they come in.
Just don’t forget to follow and like us on Twitter and Facebook.
I guess that means Impactor is now forever down and won’t be fixed.. Unless of course someone else steps up to the plate and fixes the certificate issue with Impactor that occurred several weeks ago.. When both my 6s (ios9/ios10) is deemed no longer functional, I’ll just ship over to Android now.. No reason to stay with I-Phone or pay a premium price for a new device if we can’t enjoy the themes and tweaks that Cydia allows us to use… It was fun while it lasted.
No, he will continue developing Cydia Impactor. He said he just won’t update Substrate or anything jailbreak-related anymore. You can always use Super Impactor or other tools to sign your apps.
As for Cydia, it will remain functional and has nothing to do with Saurik quitting the development scene.
You have any update regarding the certificate issue/fix that occurred two months ago?? Right now to keep my g0blin in tact I have panda helper installed with their profile so if my phone dies, I can rejailbreak. Previously Ive just rejailbroken with impactor via PC. Ive hear mixed reviews about tutu and panda helper so I much rather not have their profiles Installed if I can avoid it. since the signing issue I’m really considered getting a developer account.. This way I’m always signed and don’t have to worry about suspectual apps.
No updates so far. Saurik still maintains Impactor but I have no idea when he’s going to push an update for it.