Usbliter8: an A12/A13 SecureROM Exploit

I'm curious what this will lead to, both security wise and jailbreak hobbyist wise. I saw this overview: https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/1ua58xd/usbliter... which mentions that it won't let an attacker gain full access to iOS on a passworded device without another exploit:

> BPR, or Boot Process Register, was a feature implemented in iOS 14 in order to additionally secure devices from bootROM based attacks. Crucially, it restricts data access when a device is booted directly from DFU mode, which is required by both checkm8 and usbliter8. In iOS 14 and 15, this manifested as the requirement to disable your passcode when jailbreaking A11 devices with checkra1n/palera1n, and is the reason why A11 devices must be first erased if they previously had a passcode before jailbreaking with palera1n. A10 devices were not affected by this as they had a SEP exploit, known as blackbird, which prevented this issue from arising. We do not have a SEP exploit for A11 and newer.

This is awesome news! It isn't a jailbreak in and of itself, but it is the first step.

Right now we only have a reliable jailbreak (checkm8) for up to iOS 18 (and that's only thanks to one iPad model). Some app developers are pretty aggressive about dropping support for older iOS versions.

This affects iPhone XR, XS, 11, SE 2nd gen, and a smattering of iPads. Many of these devices got the iOS 27 beta and will likely see future iOS versions for at least another year or two.

Edit: here's the affected iPads:

* iPad Pro 11" (gen 1-2)

* iPad Pro 12.9" (gen 3-4)

* iPad mini (gen 5)

* iPad Air (gen 3)

* iPad (gen 8-9)

I first thought of SecuROM, a CD/DVD copy protection scheme applied to computer game discs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecuROM

Ohhhh this is interesting!!!!! I really miss the glory days of jailbreaking, it just unlocked so many handy, fun, and cool stuff. From running webservers to speeding up the terribly slow animations.

Sounds like it’s a low level hardware/firmware hole that can’t be patched.

Since this can only underflow and some written bits are not attacker-chosen, does this not imply that the patchable part of the software could reliably detect this just in time and panic on suspected USB DMA corruption? Where is the catch?

supposedly an unfixable vulnerability possibly affecting several iPhone models. should be more relevant than 4 points imho.

> The DesignWare USB controller stores up to three consecutive Setup packets in memory.

> Upon receiving a fourth Setup transaction, the DMA base address gets reset to its starting position before writing, akin to a ring buffer mechanism.

> After writing each received packet, the controller increments DOEPDMA by the size of data written. The reset operation is implemented by decrementing DOEPDMA by 24.

> The core issue arises because the controller also accepts smaller packets (though always stores in 4-byte chunks).

> Since the pointer increment does not match the fixed decrement amount, we end up with a buffer underflow primitive in 12-byte steps.

so the problem is directly in the hardware, not in driver

what kind of defense would work against such bugs?

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wait, am I understanding it right that DMA access was given directly to the stack??

[dead]

Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff.

Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the cliff is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls off the cliff.

DOEPDMA works the same way.