Jailbreak 101: Basic Information Everyone Should Know

Apple is one of the most successful company to hit the techno world. With their best selling products, people always watch out for their latest developments and releases such as the iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Apple TV. and every time a new product comes out, it never fails to be a big hit in the market. With its release in year 2007, iPhone mark its name on the market, but shortly after its release, a Jailbreaking method was discovered and released. consequently, Apple locked thei iPhones to US carrier AT&T a month after, giving hackers challenge to patch and exploit security holes.

Jailbreak or iOS Jailbreak is a process that allows Apple’s devices running on iOS such as iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Apple TV to gain full access to all of its features thereby removing limitations imposed by Apple. With Jailbroken Apple device, user can download, use and install applications, themes, and extensions that are not recognized by Apple and are not on the iTunes store and/or what we called “cracked” applications.

Almost a year after the initial Jailbreak, an italian hacker named Zibri el Fontu found an important key to led him to be the first to Jailbreak the iPhone using his program called ZiPhone. Zibri freely distributed his codes and exploits leading the hacker team named iPhone Dev Team to create the Jailbreaking tool PwnageTool to Jailbreak iPhone 2G and 3G and the 1ST generation iPod touch. As early as 2009, Apple release the iOS 3.0 which remained unbroken until the release of iPhone Dev Team’s PwnageTool 3.0 and redsnow 0.7.2 after 3 months. the iOS 3.0 was quickly followed up by iOS 3.1 which was then Jailbroken by iPhone Dev Team releasing a new version of PwnageTool, all Apple devices were Jailbroken except iPod Touch. But the Jailbreaking genius George Hotz (a.k.a. Geohot) release his first tool Blackra1n to “tether” Jailbreak all Apple devices. in March 2010 Wii Homebrew developer Comex released a demo of an “untethered” Jailbreak using his tool called Spirit. After the release of iPad 3G, Comex’s Spirit was released Jailbreaking all Apple devices running on 3.1-3.2, untethered. not until early 2010, Jailbreaking becomes legal under the DMCA in United States and many other countries like Europe although Apple claim it to void the warranty. until now Jailbreaking is still developing as new Apple devices or firwares are released.

What is Tethered and Untethered Jailbreak?

Many people, especially the newbies in Jailbreaking do not know the difference between a tether Jailbreak and untethered Jailbreak. Well to make it short and clear, Tethered Jailbreaking is a kind of Jailbreak that still depends on the software used to Jailbreak a device every time it needs to reboot, meaning, every time the tethered device is hard booted, turn off or ran out of battery it cannot boot on a jailbroken state unless you connect it to the computer and run the application you used to Jailbrake it, repeating some of the process of Jailbreaking. while on the other hand, Untethered Jailbreak, all devices under this Jailbreak can independently reboot itself anytime, preserving its Jailbroken state without needing the application used to Jailbreak it.

People/Team Known For Jailbreaking:

George Hotz (a.k.a. Geohot) – a 22 year old whiz developed the Jailbreaking tool Blackra1n. he is also a member of a hacking team called Fail0verflow responsible for developing Playstations’ PS3 unit Jailbreak.

Comex – a 17 year old Wii Homebrew developer and the developer of the first untethered Jailbreaking tool called Spirit.

iPhone Dev Team – hacking team developed the PwnageTool and redsnow applications.

Chronic Dev team – hacking team that develop the iOS 4.1 based untethered Jailbreak application called Greenpoison.

Jay Freeman (a.k.a. Saurik) – a technology consultant and the creator of Cydia a third-party software application for Jailbroken Apple devices responsible for allowing users to search, download and install “cracked” applications and packages that are not usually found in iTunes store and/or for a no cost at all via a repositories.

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