: You typically need a Micro-USB OTG cable or an adapter to connect the iPhone directly to the Pico. Exploitation : Put the iOS device into DFU mode .
As of May 2026, the remains the single most significant vulnerability in iOS history. Discovered in 2019 by @axi0mX, this Boot ROM exploit affects a massive range of Apple devices—from the iPhone 4s to the iPhone X—and is conceptually unpatchable because it resides in the read-only memory (SecureROM) of the hardware chip, not the software.
Once exploited, the device can be reconnected to a computer for jailbreaking, passcode bypassing, or data extraction. checkm8 pico
: At roughly $4–$5, the Pico is significantly cheaper than the Arduino with a USB Host Shield , which was previously the standard for A5 exploitation.
: The Pico implementation is often described as more stable and easier to set up than Arduino-based methods. : You typically need a Micro-USB OTG cable
is a compact, USB-powered hardware dongle designed to execute the checkm8 bootrom exploit (CVE-2019-8896) against iOS devices with A5 through A11 chipsets (iPhone 4s – iPhone X). Unlike software-based implementations that require a computer (macOS/Linux), checkm8 pico runs the exploit entirely on an embedded microcontroller, enabling portable, single-button device pwning.
is a hardware-based implementation of the famous checkm8 BootROM exploit, designed specifically to run on the affordable Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. It is primarily used to bypass security restrictions on older 32-bit Apple devices, such as the iPhone 4s, which possess unique USB controller requirements that standard PC software cannot always satisfy. Core Functionality Discovered in 2019 by @axi0mX, this Boot ROM
⚠️ checkm8 is until device loses power – tethered only.