It’s been a busy period for tihmstar’s suite of tools since the release of Prometheus during the 33c3 convention. Both TSSChecker and Prometheus have seen some problems, as well as updates in the intervening period, and this article will bring you up to date with their current statuses.
Today hacker tihmstar released his tool Prometheus, which can be used (in some cases), to upgrade or downgrade iOS to currently unsigned firmwares.
The tool is not foolproof however, so in this article I’ll briefly explain what its limitations are and how to follow tihmstar’s guidance on the tool.
A couple of days ago, we covered how to save your .shsh2 blobs manually with tsschecker, and many of you have reported back saying you managed to successfully grab them. However, if you haven’t got them yet and don’t feel tech-savvy enough to mess around with the Terminal commands required, you can try this online tool instead which should save them for you.
Many jailbreakers will be familiar with the program TinyUmbrella, which has traditionally been one of the best ways to save SHSH blobs for their iOS devices onto their Macs for safekeeping. What SHSH blobs are, their function, and how to save them is outside the scope of this article, (I will put something together soon on this), but suffice to say that saving these blobs is of some importance to many jailbreakers and that TinyUmbrella has been the go-to application for doing so for a long while.
Whilst the application was updated as recently as August by its creator Semaphore, many Mac users (myself included) have noted that the new version, 9.3.4, gives an error on launch and cannot be used at all. This guide will walk you through the fix to get your umbrella back up again on Mac, so you can carry on wishfully saving those blobs.
A new teaser video has surfaced on YouTube that appears to show an iPhone 5s being successfully downgraded from iOS 9.3.5 to iOS 9.3.2.
The video demonstrates the use of a third-party tool that the creator is calling Prometheus, but it also brings up a lot of questions that still have yet to be answered.
With iOS 8.4.1 currently in beta, chances are it will be released sooner than later, and Apple will follow up that release with a closure of the iOS 8.4 signing window.
Although we’ve seen nothing official regarding the matter—Apple still has yet to post release notes about its 8.4.1 beta—rumors are swirling that this update does indeed fix the exploits used in the TaiG iOS 8.3 and iOS 8.4 jailbreak.
With this in mind, it’s time to begin preparing mentally for what’s to come. In this post, I’ll show you how to be proactive and take the right measures to ensure a long jailbreak tenure on iOS 8.4.
When Apple closes the firmware signing window for iOS 8.3, users wishing to downgrade (or upgrade) to iOS 8.3 won’t be allowed to do so. Instead, you’ll have to settle for whatever firmware Apple is signing, which is usually the latest and greatest out there.
When that happens, it’s quite probable that it could spell the end of jailbreaking for a while—remember we just got out of a significant lull.
With this in mind, the ability to downgrade back to iOS 8.3 is very desirous for would-be jailbreakers. While there is no confirmed downgrade ability just yet, there are some things that you can do to ensure that you have the best chance to downgrade should that ability arrive.
This is accomplished by saving your iOS 8.3 SHSH blobs.
To save your SHSH blobs and prepare for a possible iOS 8.3 downgrade, you’ll need to use TinyUmbrella to do so. I’ll show you how in this post and video.
TinyUmbrella, the tool that allows users to save SHSH blobs to be used for potential downgrades, has received another update. As we reported a few weeks ago, TinyUmbrella has made a significant comeback, and its developer, semaphore, is hopeful that downgrades to iOS firmware will be a real thing in the not so distant future.
With this in mind, semaphore is continuing to improve TinyUmbrella, and this latest beta version contains numerous fixes and iterative enhancements. If you still haven’t saved your SHSH blobs, I advise you to stop what you’re doing, download TinyUmbrella, and do so today.
As promised, Semaphore has released a rewrite of his popular TinyUmbrella tool for OS X and Windows. The tool, which has been completely rewritten from the ground up, is currently in beta and requires Java.
Semaphore has alluded to the fact that the new TinyUmbrella may have far-reaching consequences related to downgrading both 32-bit and 64-bit devices. Back in the original TinyUmbrella’s heyday, it was used as a tool to help downgrade to prior versions of iOS.
Good news jailbreakers. Notcom has finally updated his popular SHSH blob-saver to support iOS 6.1.3. Apple seeded the update to users more than a month ago with a fix for the latest Lock screen security bug and Maps improvements.
Unfortunately, 6.1.3 also killed several of the exploits that the evad3rs were using in evasi0n, effectively killing the iOS 6 jailbreak. But for those of you who upgraded to it, whether by accident or choice, here’s TinyUmbrella version 6.13.00…
Recently, Saurik, the creator of Cydia, posted a new blog entry explaining the history of Cydia’s TSS caching capabilities. As you know, Cydia has been able to automatically save off SHSH blobs for potential downgrade ability with jailbroken devices.
Things have changed rapidly over the years as iOS’ security evolved. The earlier versions of iOS included absolutely no downgrade protection. Eventually, with the adaption of TSS, basic verification to make sure that you were installing newer firmware, instead of older firmware arrived. This security was enhanced further with the adoption of a new verification scheme — APTicket — which has proved to be a pain in the rear for would be downgraders. Yes, there have been, and will always be a few exceptions to that rule, but for the most part, Apple has done a good job of cutting off the ability to downgrade firmware.
What does all of this have to do with Cydia’s new TSS Center? Well as it turns out, the APTickets saved for iOS 6.0-6.1.2 are all “useless”, as they’re incomplete tickets unsuitable for booting a device.
In a post on his blog named Where did my iOS 6 TSS data go? Saurik explains in verbose detail the issue at hand…
In light of Apple releasing iOS 6.1.2 last week, notcom has seeded a new version of his TinyUmbrella app. The popular SHSH blob-saving tool now supports all versions of iOS, excluding 6.1.3, which is still in beta.
That beta, though, is already causing waves in the jailbreak community. Evidence has been found in the firmware that Apple is patching evasi0n’s exploits, which makes this TinyUmbrella extremely important…
