Apple had proudly announced a few days back that they have blocked an exploit which enabled hackers to jailbreak iPhones. By introducing the new version of “iBoot” Apple had told that it prevents the exploit 24kpwn. However, iPhone hackers say Apple’s new firmware only causes a temporary inconvenience for jailbroken devices, and the handset is still hackable.
It was always known that the hackers would find an alternative loophole to jailbreak iPhone, but I expected it to take some time for the hackers to succeed again. Eric McDonald, a member of the iPhone Dev-Team, explained that current tools will still work with the latest batch of iPhone 3GS units. The “24kpwn” exploit used to help jailbreak previous iPhones and iPod Touch devices only made it easier to boot up the hacked devices.
The newly shipping iPhone 3GS’s boot-rom interferes with 24kpwn, but that will only make the handset difficult to start up after it shuts down. Booting up will require being “tethered” to a computer. That means if you shut down a jailbroken iPhone 3GS, or if it runs out of power, you can only turn it back on by plugging it into a computer.
In short, changing the bootrom makes owning a jailbroken iPhone even more of a hassle than it already is. However, McDonald said the Dev-Team will just have to find a new exploit to enable untethered booting once again.
In short:
With the latest upgrade, it appears Apple has not stopped the Dev-Team from breaking in. But for the time being, the company has made hacking new iPhones very inconvenient and perhaps impractical. I am sure it won’t be long before the dev team finds a work-around again!
My bootrom doesn’t match this “new” one. Oh no… it’s even WORSE than this “new” one~!! It doesn’t let me use the current pwnage and blackra1n tools. PERIOD. Teethered or unteethered — it just kills the screen and the only thing you can do is restore it to the unmolested Apple firmware. Otherwise, NOTHING works — resetting etc. etc. You get a dead iPhone — unless you go with the legal stuff.
The ironic thing? We have 4 iPhone 3GS’s here — and that LAST one was the only one that didn’t jailbreak. The others JB’ed in under a couple seconds (blackra1n)! We had the other 3 about a month prior to getting the last one. Tried using blackra1n and pwnage 3.1.4 — same results — it just won’t boot (unless restored to original software).
All the iPhones are carrier-unlocked, hence I wasn’t afraid to use blackra1n. The last one was hacked on both a mac and PC with the same negative results. And yes, I did kill iTunes, iTunes helper. If anyone has any more ideas, I’d like to know.
Until then, the only thing I (or rather… my sister-in-law) can do is wait.
Yeah, it won’t be too long till you find a way out, just wait!
does it boot up tethered to a walloutlet? or does it HAVE to be connected to a computer?