A developer has managed to exploit a vulnerability found in iOS 16 to change the system’s default font without even using a jailbreak. This was reported by 9to5Mac.

Zhuowei Zhang shared his project, which he called “test app”, on Twitter. According to Zhang, the app he developed uses exploit CVE-2022-46689 to overwrite the default iOS font.

The CVE-2022-46689 exploit affects devices running iOS 16.1.2 or earlier and allows applications to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. The exploit was patched in iOS 16.2 and fixed a number of other vulnerabilities discovered in the previous version of iOS.

Zhang explains that the process should be safe as all changes are reversed after the device reboots. However, the developer recommends that users trying the app back up their device before changing the default system font. He also explains that the change only affects the text part of iOS, as other parts of the system use different fonts.

More details about the project, including the source code, are available on GitHub.