“So looks like all my A5(X) devices are fully untethered and jailbroken for life now. :)” iH8sn0w, the developer behind Sn0wBreeze and other jailbreak apps, tweeted this afternoon. The comment has caused quite a bit of excitement, as we haven’t seen anything like this in jailbreaking since LimeRa1n.

iH8sn0w says he doesn’t have a bootrom exploit though, but rather a “powerful iBoot exploit.” And although it doesn’t look like he’s going to do anything with it right now in terms of a public release, it sounds like he’ll be able to use the exploit in future jailbreaks, and to find similar bugs in A6/A7 chips…

Ok, here are the tweets everyone is talking about:

A5 AES Keys anyone? 4S 7.0.4 iBSS -iv 3a0fc879691a5a359973792bcd367277 -k 371e3aea9121d90b8106228bf2b5ee4c638a0b4837fefbd87a3c0aca646e5996 — iH8sn0w (@iH8sn0w) February 1, 2014

So looks like all my A5(X) devices are fully untethered and jailbroken for life now. 🙂 — iH8sn0w (@iH8sn0w) February 1, 2014

No. This isn’t a bootrom exploit. Still a very powerful iBoot exploit though (when exploited properly ;P /cc @winocm). — iH8sn0w (@iH8sn0w) February 1, 2014

iH8sn0w goes on to say that an iBoot exploit can be as powerful as a bootrom exploit when utilized correctly, and he’s going to start looking at A6 chips ‘later.’ But when asked if he planned to release the exploit, the hacker responded “nah. I’ll probably keep it private for development of future jailbreaks.”

So what does all of this mean in layman’s terms? Nothing right now. But iH8sn0w’s discovery could prove invaluable in future jailbreaks. And in a world where Apple is constantly beefing up iOS security, and able hackers are few and far between, it never hurts to have something like this in your hip pocket.

Thanks Matthew M!