How to Protect iOS Apps Against Liberty Lite Jailbreak detection Bypass

Learn 3 easy steps to Protect iOS Apps against Liberty Lite and other Jailbreak bypass tools found on Cydia.

What is Liberty Lite?

Liberty Lite is a general-purpose Jailbreak detection bypass tweak for iOS 11/12 firmware that allows users to evade/bypass/hide in-app jailbreak detection mechanisms.It is developed by famed patch developer, Ryley Angus.Since it’s the “lite” version of the original Liberty Cydia tweak, a major feature is missing from this tweak. Users can’t selectively enable and disable Cydia Substrate or, in Electra’s case, Comex’s Substitute with this version.

Keep reading to learn how to use Appdome Jailbreak Prevention to protect any iOS app against Liberty Lite and other Jailbreak detection bypass tools.

What is iOS Jailbreaking?

Jailbreaking is the process of unlocking the iOS operating system on an Apple mobile device. Jailbreaking is a form of administrative privilege escalation, which bypasses Apple’s restrictions, resulting in full administrative control over the OS (the highest level of administrative privilege possible).  Jailbreaking is often accomplished by exploiting bugs in Apple’s software/firmware or modifying system kernels to allow read and write access to the file system. Jailbreaking is one of the primary methods/tools for every hacker – both black hat hackers and white hat hackers (eg: penetration testers or security researchers). They all use Jailbreaking in similar ways (to compromise the security model of mobile devices, the operating system, and any app running on the device). The main difference is that black hat hackers have malicious intent, while white-hat hackers generally have non-malicious intent.

Here are the Top 3 reasons Hackers Use Liberty Lite  

1. To bypass in-app Jailbreak detection mechanisms and Jailbreak iPhones while remaining undetected.
2. To access alternative app stores
3. To get file system access to the mobile OS, escalate privileges, and compromise the security model of mobile apps running on the device.
4. To change the behavior of the OS in ways that Apple does not support

Whatever the intent, Jailbreaking makes every hacker’s job much easier by providing a significant advantage to compromise the security model, due to the elevated level of privilege and full administrative control that Jailbreaking enables. Jailbreaking makes it easier to disable anti-tampering protections, turn off digital rights management checks, to disable mobile threat detection SDKs in the source code. Jailbreaking makes it easier to run a tool like FRIDA to perform dynamic code injection, function hooking, method swizzling (all methods by which hackers alter the logical control flows of a mobile app to replace intended app behaviors with their own malicious behaviors).

Bottom line: Jailbreaking compromises the mobile security model. It enables hackers to send fake signals, to modify code, to modify the file system, to disable security protections. Any iOS app that runs on a Jailbroken device is in a vulnerable state, where hackers can amplify and increase the magnitude of their attacks – all with less effort.

What is Jailbreak Detection Bypass (aka Jailbreak Hiding)?

Hackers use Jailbreak Bypass and Jailbreak Hiding tools to evade Jailbreak detection/protections. As mentioned above, Jailbreaking makes it easier to hack iOS apps and to compromise the mobile security model. So if a mobile app is protected with Jailbreak detection or Jailbreak protection, hackers will try to either bypass the protection or hide the fact that the device is Jailbroken.

If hackers can hide the fact that the device is jailbroken, they can continue to do whatever activity they used Jailbreak to achieve over a longer period of time and without being noticed.

Hackers combine Jailbreak tools with Jailbreak detection bypass tools to kill two birds with one stone. For example, hackers combine the use of Jailbreak tools like CheckRa1n,Unc0ver, Zylon, PlankFilza, Chimera, etc, (which they use to Jailbreak iOS), alongside special-purpose Jailbreak Bypass or Jailbreak hiding tools like Liberty Lite and FlyJB (which are specifically designed to either bypass jailbreak detection mechanisms or conceal the fact that the device is jailbroken). The first set of tools is used to achieve Jailbreak state, while the second set of tools is used to conceal the existence of jailberaking.

How to Protect iOS Apps against Liberty Lite Jailbreaking Detection Bypass Tool

Please follow these 3 easy steps to add Jailbreak Prevention to any iOS app and prevent hackers from using Liberty Lite to bypass Jailbreak detection. 

1. Upload an iOS App to Appdome’s no code security platform (.ipa)
2. In the Build Tab, under Security, Select Jailbreak Prevention (shown below)
3. Click Build My App

Alan Bavosa