Jailbreak iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Recently MuscleNerd, the member of DevTeam, reported the presence of an interesting security bug in Safari for the iPhone. It will probably allow a quick remote jailbreak of iPhone or iPod Touch simply by connecting the device to an external website created for this purpose.

The bug was discovered by two hackers Ralph Phillip and Vincenzo Iozzo, who won the prize of $15 000 during CanSecWest. Their initial idea was to use a web portal to do the exploit of the SMS database and retrieve it’s content.

iH8sn0w has just released a new version of Sn0wbreeze, the Windows tool that allows you to jailbreak Firmware 3.1.3. This is a small update that fixes a problem that occurs only on 64bit operating system.

You can download the new sn0wbreeze 1.5.2 here.

We still recommend to use DevTeam utilities – RedSn0w (Windows and MAC OS) and PwnageTool (MAC OS only).

iDongle is a new device that lets you to jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch or reboot it on the go. It is very easy to use -- just plug it in and wait. The only problem is that it supports only iPod Touch 2G/3G and 3.1.2 iPhone 3GS.

At the moment there is only a dozen of this devices, but the developer says he collects money at the moment to build up a full-fledged production.

Several users report that Apple started allowing iPod touch owners to upgrade to iPhone OS 3 for no charge.

The information initially comes from PocketGamer’s Tracy Erickson:

Syncing a second generation iPod touch today with an older version of the software prompted me to accept the free upgrade. How exciting.

Just as when asked to download and install the latest firmware on an iPhone, iTunes simply asks for confirmation – no signing in to pay for the software.

Sounds like free a good price for iPod touch 3.1.3 upgrade.

PS: Jailbreakers: think before updating – you might lose the ability to jailbreak your device if you upgrade the firmware.

Update: Several users confirmed the free update. However a number of users report that they are still asked to pay for the update.

It looks like Apple has started banning iPhone hackers from the iTunes App Store.

A few day ago Sherif Hashim, the iPhone developer and hacker, tweeted that he had found an exploit in the latest iPhone OS 3.1.3, which could enable the unlock on 05.12.01 baseband for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G. Yesterday he has been banned by Apple for the so called “security reasons”. It seems that Apple is quite angry! Here is what Sherif gets when he tries to access App Store from his iPhone:

Sherif Hashim’s Tweets:

“Your Apple ID was banned for security reasons”, that’s what i get when i try to go to the app store, they must be really angry ))))

and guess what my apple ID was, “sherif_hashim@yahoo.com”, what a fool was me not to notice )), can’t help laughing, they are babies ))

Another iPhone hacker named iH8sn0w, the developer of Sn0wbreeze (PwnageTool alternative for Windows), tweeted saying he was also banned by Apple right after he released an exploit known as XEMN:

@sherif_hashim lol, they did that to my ih8sn0wyday[@t]googmail.com too. (right after I posted XEMN)…

For now Apple isn’t banning Jailbreakers – they’re banning people who actively work to find exploits in the iPhone software to create Jailbreaks for the rest of us.

GeoHot recently posted a small message on twitter. He actually responds to many users who continue to ask him about the ability to run firmware 3.1.3 jailbreak using Blackra1n.

GeoHot has always been a bit reluctant to release new versions for various minor firmware updates. His advice is in fact once again to keep firmware 3.1.2, because the latest one does not have anything interesting.

GeoHot will be certainly back on the scene with the next release of firmware 3.2 in March / April or firmware 4.0 that is expected in July.

iH8sn0w released a new version of Sn0wbreeze, the Windows tool that allows to jailbreak the newest firmware 3.1.3. This is a small update that addresses several problems with YouTube.

You can download the new version of sn0wbreeze from here.

We still recommend to use DevTeam utilities – redsn0w (Windows and MAC OS) and pwnagetool (MAC OS only).

Fuzzyband is an application that can downgrade the baseband for iPhone 3G. Recently it has been updated to include the support for firmware 3.1.3 baseband 05.12.01. It works only with bootloader 05.08 (early iPhone 3G).

Why do users need to downgrade the baseband? The answer is simple: if they accidentally upgraded the new firmware and need to run unlock software (blacksn0w and ultrasn0w). Unlocked iPhones do not need Fuzzyband. iPhone 3GS users cannot downgrade baseband with Fuzzyband.

Fuzzyband is available for jailbreaked iPhones in Cydia (repository BigBoss, category “System” ).

Sherif Hashim has discovered an exploit which may allow unlock of the latest iPhone OS 3.1.3 baseband 05.12.01. Such unlock utilities for previous baseband versions were called blacksn0w, ultrasn0w и and yellowsn0w. MuscleNerd, the member of DevTeam, has already confirmed it is working. So the timing of the unlcok release is totally up to them right now.

Here is an official update from DevTeam:

“We’ve started to look at his crash but it’s a long road between any given crash and a fully working unlock, and we couldn’t put an ETA on it even if we wanted to. It’s not even guaranteed that an working unlock will come from this particular crash — it’s just too early to tell.”

According to the statistics just 14% of iPhone users have updated the firmware to version 3.1.3.

In particular 72.3% are still using firmware 3.1.2, less than 1% – firmware 3.1.1 and 4.6% have previous versions yet. The reasons for this are probably from the fact that 3.1.3 is only a minor update. Another reason could be the uncertainty of the jailbreak.