Every time Apple releases a new firmware, members of the Jailbreak community eagerly await the release of an untethered Jailbreak utility – iOS 5.1 was no exception. Since last month’s release of Apple’s latest firmware, pod2g and other hackers that collaborate with both well known “Dev Teams” (the iPhone Dev Team and the Chronic Dev Team) have been tediously working on an untethered Jailbreak solution.
Just minutes ago pod2g informed his Twitter followers that they (pod2g and his associates), “have all exploits required to do a new [untethered] jailbreak” and that he’s, “working on bypassing ASLR at boot up”! Prior to this update, on March 30th, pod2g said that he had “no clue” when an untethered Jailbreak would be ready and that they had “weeks of work” ahead.
Unfortunately, for now, the current public iOS 5.1 Jailbreak is tethered. Essentially, that means the Jailbroken iDevice requires the assistance of a utility (in this case Redsn0w) to successfully boot into its “Jailbroken state”. Tethered Jailbreaks, like the current iOS 5.1 variant, rely on a bootrom-based (hardware) exploit.
Bootrom exploits are patched by Apple upon the release of updated hardware; i.e., new iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch models. Since the last bootrom exploit was discovered by GeoHot, Apple has released three new iDevices (the iPad 2, iPhone 4S, and the new iPad) with updated bootroms that officially close the exploit.
While bootrom exploits simply result in a tethered Jailbreak, userland exploits can be used when creating utilities in lieu of a bootrom (tethered) exploit to provide an untethered Jailbreak. Contrary to popular belief, bootrom exploits are much more difficult to discover than userland, or untethered exploits. Since the bootrom vulnerability used in Redsn0w is outdated, the A5 and A5X-based iDevices are excluded from current tethered Jailbreaks.
But, with pod2g’s news of having discovered all the required exploits for a “new jailbreak”, it would appear that they’re on the verge of releasing a new (untethered) utility for iOS 5.1!
As usual, there isn’t an official release date; stay tuned for full coverage on the iOS 5.1 untethered Jailbreak situation as it progresses.
