Okay, so remember how we told you that Apple modified new iPhone 3GS’s to prevent current and future jailbreak exploits? Right, well, turns out that wasn’t as true as we once thought. Our bad. New iPhone 3GS’s have been modified, that much is true, but they can still be jailbroken (which is where we were wrong). The iPhone Dev Team is now saying that Apple may have killed the “24kpwn” exploit that allowed the current jailbreak to work, but it’s more of a bump in the road than an all-out roadblock against future jailbreak attempts. “It’s not going to be impossible to jailbreak even if the exploit we used is gone,” said the iPhone Dev Team’s Eric McDonald in a phone interview with Wired.
In fact, factory-fresh iPhone 3GS hardware can still be jailbroken. The “24kpwn” exploit was only used to make the jailbreak process as simple as possible. A new iPhone 3GS can still be jailbroken, but it will need to be connected (tethered)to a computer of some sort (like a TI-86 calculator) in order to boot up. It’s a hassle, to be sure, but the iPhone Dev Team is already working to re-enable “untethered” booting of jailbroken iPhone 3GS’s in the near future.
The Dev Team has already found a new exploit that they can use to jailbreak new iPhone 3GS hardware without the need for a tethered boot. We’ll inevitably see that new exploit in use in future versions of PwnageTool. So, fear not, potential iPhone 3GS buyer. You’ll have a working jailbreak available to you in the near future.
The cat-and-mouse game between Apple and iPhone jailbreakers continues…
[Via: Wired]