Now that both iOS 5.1 and the iOS 5.1 tethered Jailbreak for older iDevices have been out for over three weeks, the fast majority of Jailbreakers are starting to grow restless as the demand for an untethered Jailbreak for all iDevices continues to grow.
Just moments ago pod2g, an active iOS security expert and hacker for the Jailbreak community, informed fans via Twitter that he has “no clue” when it (the untethered Jailbreak) will be released and that he’s been devoting “some hours per week” to finding vulnerabilities.
For those of you that are unaware, the current iOS 5.1 Jailbreak is tethered – essentially, that means the Jailbroken iDevice requires the aid of Redsn0w to reboot into its fully functional Jailbroken state. Additionally, tethered Jailbreaks rely on a hardware-based bootrom exploit; the most current bottom exploit is the limera1n exploit (discovered by Geohot) and it only works on A4-based devices and the third-generation iPhone and iPod Touch.
Userland exploits, unlike bootrom exploits, can be easily patched with the release of a new firmware and therefore requires constant effort form the iOS hackers. However, while easily patchable, userland exploits allow for an untethered Jailbreak.
With that said, even though numerous iOS security experts are on the hunt for a new userland exploit, pod2g informed us that they’re still missing “pieces of a userland Jailbreak” and that even if they had them, “there’s weeks of work”.
As usual, there isn’t an estimated release date for the untethered Jailbreak and unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll see a public Jailbreak utility anytime in the near future. Stay tuned for full coverage on the iOS 5.1 untethered Jailbreak situation.
