Cydia founder Saurik took to Twitter to talk about a new Cydia Impactor issue that has been plaguing many users due to a server-side change from Apple a couple of weeks ago.
A change in Apple’s provisioning service a couple of weeks ago changed the authentication method for free Apple accounts i.e. users without a paid Apple Developer account. This led to users getting an error while trying to use Cydia Impactor and prompting them to update to Xcode 7.3.
Saurik explained the issue in-depth and the time it would require to fix the problem on Twitter. To get Cydia Impactor to again work with free Apple accounts, Saurik will have to spend at least a week to reverse engineer Apple’s code for interoperability. He could drop support for Linux and only support macOS and Windows which should make things slightly easier, but he is not inclined to do that.
About two weeks ago, Apple made a change to their provisioning service to require a different authentication scheme for "free" Apple accounts (they return an error that mentions upgrading to "Xcode 7.3"); this broke Cydia Impactor for users without a paid Apple Developer account.
— Jay Freeman (saurik) (@saurik) November 19, 2019
Cydia Impactor (unlike, say, ReProvision) is intended to run on stock desktop platforms (macOS, Windows, and Linux); to support this new authentication scheme will require spending some time—I'd guess well over a week?—reverse engineering Apple's code to achieve interoperability.
— Jay Freeman (saurik) (@saurik) November 19, 2019
Whatever the case might be, the bad news is that Saurik does not have time until at least mid-December to work on Cydia Impactor and fix this issue. So, if you rely on Cydia Impactor to sideload apps, you are out of luck until then. You could pay Apple $99 to enroll in the Developer Program. This way, you can start using Cydia Impactor again without any issues. The other option is to use online signing services like Ignition which works if you want to sideload popular apps like Unc0ver or Chimera.
The jailbreaking community needs to respect Saurik’s decision and give him the required space. He is under no obligation to work on Cydia Impactor under his free time or keep it in a working state. Most people primarily used Cydia Impactor for sideloading a jailbreaking app on their iPhone or iPad. The latest jailbreaking tool for iOS 13, Checkra1n jailbreak, however, does not require that as it is a semi-tethered jailbreak and requires one to have access to a PC.
Do you still use Cydia Impactor? If so, why?
