pod2g

As promised, albeit a little late, iH8sn0w and winocm have delivered an untethered jailbreak for A5 devices running iOS 6.1.3-6.1.5, but their use of an unused exploit is not sitting well with some in the jailbreaking community.

Evad3rs member pod2g took to Twitter to blast iH8sn0w and winocm for using an exploit originally found by JailbreakMe creator Comex. Pod2g believes using a "highly valuable root exploit" on older firmware was a waste of time, and he claims iH8sn0w and winocm have destroyed any chance for it to be used for future jailbreak releases. A lot of people in the jailbreaking community agree, and are worried Apple will now close the exploit since it was made public.

The evad3rs iOS 7 jailbreak has had a bit of a rocky launch. First there were rumors that someone close to the group had stolen the exploit and sold it to a private buyer, then soon after its release the jailbreak community accused the evad3rs of becoming greedy by partnering with the Chinese App Store TaiG.

The evad3rs quickly responded to all the rumors with a message posted on their website. In a letter addressed to the "Jailbreak Community," the evad3rs have made it clear that users were "not locked into TaiG" and could still install Cydia. The evad3rs also added that they had never shared their exploits with TaiG's owners, and that preventing piracy is extremely important to them. This all lead to pod2g announcing on Twitter today, that the evad3rs had decided to "remotely disable the default installation of TaiG in China for further investigations on the piracy issue."

It looks like the jailbreaking team who brought us evasi0n is getting closer to cracking iOS 7. Planetbeing tweeted this afternoon: "We're still working hard on the jailbreak. May have all the pieces at this point (but not certain yet)."

This does not mean a public jailbreak is right around the corner, but it does show progress is being made.

This is great news for jailbreakers who are waiting to upgrade to iOS 7. The last public jailbreak was patched by iOS 6.1.3 in March, leaving millions of Apple users stranded at iOS 6.1.2.

Evad3rs member pod2g has confirmed there will be no more jailbreaks for iOS 6. This means iPhone and iPad owners who would like to keep their devices jailbroken are stuck with iOS 6.1.2 until iOS 7 is released. This does not mean jailbreaking is dead like some Apple blogs are leading people to believe. Anyone who has previously jailbroken their device knows they will eventually get stuck using an older version of iOS. This is just how the process works.

Apple is expected to announce iOS 7 at its WWDC event sometime in June. While an official date has yet to be announced, some developers believe the event will be held on June 10-14th, based on a gap in in the Moscone Center calendar. It wouldn't make much sense for the evad3rs to jailbreak iOS 6.1.3 with the next big version looming right around the corner.

Unlike previous iOS releases, iOS 6 has been a tough nut to crack. However, pod2g has taken a break from developing apps to work on a solution with fellow iOS hacker planetbeing. This is great news since pod2g announced in September that he was not working on an iOS 6 jailbreak.

On Friday, planetbeing tweeted that the pair had made more progress:

Made some nice progress today with @pod2g. I think I'll try to reward myself with a nap. :)

— planetbeing (@planetbeing) January 19, 2013

Pod2g responded by announcing they had discovered two new vulnerabilities, but said they're still far away from a public release:

. @planetbeing oh yeah! 2 new vulnerabilities in a day, chance was with us. But we still miss that initial code execution for a public jb :/

— pod2g (@pod2g) January 19, 2013