iPhone Jailbreaking

Fake jailbreaking tools are cropping up on the web and unsuspecting iPhone owners can easily be fooled into thinking they are downloading the real thing. The BigBoss repository is now warning against two programs that have hit the web, Thunderst0rm and TurboSn0w2. This software is fake and will not jailbreak your iPhone running 3.1.3 firmware.

In fact, this software will not jailbreak anything. iPhone hacking website modmyi has proven just how useless these two programs really are. There was speculation they might install spyware but it seems they are just annoying fakes.

A new utility has been developed by iH8Sn0w for users interested in figuring out whether they can jailbreak or unlock their iPhone or iPod Touch. F0recast will check your device using the USB connection and examine the baseband and bootloader versions.

Jailbreaking and downgrading have become more complex as different versions of hardware and software are constantly released by Apple. F0recast will tell you if your iPhone is unlockable, if you can downgrade your software, and if your specific model requires a tethered jailbreak.

Five days after Apple released the 3.1.3 iPhone OS update the Dev-Team has countered with PwnageTool version 3.1.5, making a jailbreak of the latest firmware possible. This software currently only runs on Mac OS X, and works by updating your firmware to 3.1.3 with a custom IPSW file.

If you are already running the official 3.1.3 firmware on your device the jailbreak will not work. Dev-Team also reports that unless you have a problem with the reporting of your battery percentage, there's probably no good reason to update. If you're already jailbroken/unlocked with 3.1.2 you can use PwnageTool to safely update to 3.1.3.

Unbelievable that it's already been three months since the release of PwnageTool 3.1.4 for Mac OS X. The latest installment in iPhone Dev-Team's jailbreaking arsenal makes it possible to execute a tethered jailbreak on the iPhone 3GS fresh out of the box. This hardware is running iPhone OS 3.1.2.

Windows users have been waiting for a an update, and now it may be on its way. MuscleNerd has announced via Twitter that the team is working on redsn0w 0.9, a fast jailbreak solution for Windows and other platforms. No word yet on when this new version of redsn0w will be released.

Worried that upgrading your shiny Mac to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) for $29 will screw up your iPhone? No worries. Dev-Team has announced the Snow Leopard upgrade does not affect the redsn0w jailbreak or the ultrasn0w unlock.

Next on the horizon from Apple is the iPhone 3.1 update, possibly coming our way this month. AT&T is expected to release an MMS update on September 25 using iTunes.