iPhone Jailbreaking

Thanks to the hard work of pod2g the untethered iOS 5.0.1 jailbreak is finally here. He shared his exploits with the iPhone Dev-Team and Chronic Dev Team, and now there's a suite of tools for anyone running iOS 5.0.1 on a non-A5 device. This is great news for jailbreakers, however it also means that iPhone 4S and iPad 2 owners are still waiting for an untethered jailbreak.

First off, the redsn0w jailbreak tool has been updated to 0.9.10b1 on OS X and Windows. This new version of redsn0w requires iOS 5.0.1 installed on your device, and will jailbreak the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (GSM), iPhone 4 (CDMA), original iPad, iPod touch 3G and iPod touch 4G untethered.

The good news is iPhone hacker pod2g is still working on his promised untethered iPhone 4S jailbreak. The bad news is he's having "processor cache" issues. Pod2g wrote on his blog:

"Here is the news of the 4S week-end.The untether fails right now because I'm having processor cache issues. I'm close, but I can't figure out what happens. It certainly has something to do with the Cortex-A9 cache management.I could sort it out quick, it's a matter of chance."

Pod2g excited the jailbreaking community when he successfully tested an untethered jailbreak on an iPod 4G and iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0.1 a few weeks ago. Currently their is no jailbreak for the iPhone 4S, but recent progress by pod2g and the Chronic Dev Team point to one being released soon. Pod2g promised another update on his progress tomorrow.

Apple has planted fake device listings like "iPad10,1" and "AppleTV8,3" in configuration files to throw off developers looking for future iOS devices in their new iOS 5.1 beta 2. Mark Gurman (via MacRumors) discovered that the devices listed in the file, USBDeviceConfiguration.plist, went from around two dozen to over 100 items since the last release.

Besides the amusing fake files, iOS 5.1 beta 2 hasn't revealed anything too interesting. There are a few new bug fixes and the ability to remove images from the iCloud Photo Stream. The previous iOS 5.1 beta featured a possible battery drain fix, and an inactive code in the Camera app that allows panoramic photos.

iPhone hacker pod2g just released a video showing his new untethered jailbreak for iOS 5. The video shows the new exploit working on an iPod Touch even after it has been powered down and turned back on. Pod2g tweeted that the jailbreak "will work on iOS 5.0.1" and that he plans to test it on an iPad 2 and iPhone 4S when he is ready. He also tweeted a link to his new blog which he says he'll update when he has more info.

Today I succeed in jailbreaking my iPod 3G. The exploit is user-land, rely on a user ROP payload and a kernel write anywhere exploit.

I can't give much details right now, but here are the next steps :
- upgrade the iPod 3G to iOS 5.0.1
- do the same on iPhone 4 / iOS 5.0.1
- then iPad 1 & iPod 4G

At every step, the exploit code needs certainly to be reworked, but I really don't know right now. Next, I'll return to the research for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. I don't know if I gonna release first for other devices or not. I've to think about it. Feel free to give your opinion.

An untethered jailbreak solution for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 is getting closer and closer. Thanks to new crash reporter software released last week, the Chronic Dev Team is hard at work collecting submissions from iPhone users everywhere. 10 million in one week to be exact, which will help the team identify possible exploits for a new iOS 5 jailbreak.

It seems even if iPhone users have not jailbroken their iPhones that supporting the jailbreak community is a popular pastime. CDevReporter can be downloaded directly from Chronic Dev Team to help send information from your device that will help them find the next big jailbreak avenue.