Three years of pwnage(tool)

Three years ago (almost to the day!), the first version of PwnageTool was released for firmware 1.1.4. So today we’re excited to release another edition of both PwnageTool and redsn0w to bring an untethered jailbreak for Apple’s latest firmware, FW 4.3.1.

The 4.3.1 untether exploit comes courtesy of Stefan Esser (@i0n1c on twitter), a security researcher based in Germany. Stefan has a long history of vulnerability research, and ironically his first contribution to the iPhone jailbreak community was improved security – last year he beat Apple to the punch and implemented ASLR for jailbroken iPhones with his “antid0te” framework. We’re happy to see that Stefan then turned his iPhone attention over to an untethered jailbreak exploit!

The 4.3.1 untether works on all devices that actually support 4.3.1 except for the iPad2:

iPhone3GS

iPhone4 (GSM)

iPod touch 3G

iPod touch 4G

iPad1

AppleTV 2G (PwnageTool only for now)

The reason the untether won’t work as-is on the iPad2 is that it requires a bootrom or iBoot-level exploit to install, and the iPad2 is not susceptible to either the limera1n or SHAtter bootrom exploits.

WARNING WARNING – ultrasn0w users don’t update yet! We need to first release an update to ultrasn0w that fixes some incompatibilities when FW 4.3.1 is used on the older basebands supported by ultrasn0w. And remember once we do fix ultrasn0w for 4.3.1 (we’ll announce it here and on twitter), you must only get there via a custom IPSW from PwnageTool, Sn0wbreeze or xpwn! Don’t ever try to restore or update to a stock IPSW, or you’ll lose the unlock!

For everyone else, redsn0w is the easier program to use (and redsn0w runs on both Mac and Windows). Please check out places like iClarified for some excellent guides on how to use both PwnageTool and redsn0w.

Feel free to ask for help in our comments section. Thanks once again to our fantastic moderators for volunteering their time and knowledge and keeping order: Confucious, sherif_hashim, dhlizard, Frank55, and subarurider!

redsn0w 0.9.6rc9:

redsn0w 0.9.6rc12 (updated to rc12..details in Update #1 below):

PwnageTool Official Bittorent Releases

SHA1 Sum = 9e8ce7d4eb79b5f839efa0233893ef1a6a5e3c5c

Unofficial Mirrors

The following links are unofficial download mirrors, you download these archives at your own risk, we accept no responsibility if your computer explodes or if it becomes part of a NASA attacking botnet or even worse if your hands fall off mid-way during the use of these files. We do not check these links and we accept no responsibility with regard to the validity of the files, the other content that these links may provide or with the content that is on the third-party linked site.

Always check the files that you have downloaded against our published SHA1 hash.

We would prefer that you downloaded the official bittorrent release that is linked above, but you are welcome to try these if you really must.

Mirror owners should email mirrors to blog@iphone-dev.org - please ensure that they are direct dmg download links only (no rapidshare type sites please) and that your web-server can serve DMG MIME types properly. — please don’t place mirrors in the comments as they will be deleted.

Update #1:

Those running redsn0w may have noticed we enabled too many Settings options in some versions of the jailbreak (for instance, what you want your side switch to do, even if you have no side switch because you’re not using an iPad). Release rc10 rc12 of redsn0w corrects that (you can just run it over your existing jailbreak…be sure to de-select Cydia to avoid package conflicts).

Along the way, we’ve also added the option to enable boot animations…these animations can be installed via Cydia, but be sure to select which animation to use via the Settings->Bootlogo setting after you’ve downloaded an animation (and again, you can just run rc10 rc12 over your existing jailbreak…be sure to de-select Cydia to avoid package conflicts).

(The boot animation we tested against was “Android Boot Logo”. It correctly installs all the dependencies needed to run the animation at each boot).

redsn0w 0.9.6rc10:

redsn0w_0.9.6rc12: (rc12 should fix any lingering issues with the boot animation)

Update #2:

We’ve pushed out the 4.3.1 compatibility fix for ultrasn0w in Cydia – it’s now at version 1.2.1. If you’re not already at 4.3.1 and you need the unlock, please be sure you understand how to get to 4.3.1 using a custom IPSW that doesn’t update your baseband. There are lots of guides for this (like at iClarified.com).

This isn’t a new unlock! It’s to allow those who are already using ultrasn0w to use FW 4.3.1. It also fixes the signal bar issue for those who aren’t using the unlock but retain an older baseband intentionally.

AFTER INSTALLING ULTRASN0W 1.2.1, PLEASE REBOOT YOUR iPHONE using the normal “slide to power off” swipe. T-Mobile users in the USA also should disable 3G mode in Settings->General->Network.

A big thanks to @sbingner and @ronaldsb for helping with the testing of this update!