Spirit

How to Prepare Your iPhone or iPad for the Spirit Jailbreak

Even though Comex delayed the release of Spirit, we know that we're just a few days away from the official release date. Spirit will sure be able to jailbreak your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, but the exploit used will most likely be patched in a matter of days by Apple.

To protect yourself in the event of an "accidental upgrade" to a newer firmware which would make you lose your jailbreak, you will have to save your SHSH blobs.

What is SHSH and why save them?

Taimur gave us a pretty good description of what SHSH are and why they are important:

"So first up, what exactly is SHSH blob or ECID SHSH? Well, it is basically is a unique signature which is checked against Apple servers whenever you decide to restore the firmware on any of your iDevice (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch). Once a new firmware is released, Apple stops signing the older firmware, hence making it impossible to restore back to the older firmware from iTunes.

Now to “why is it important to save SHSH blob”: The creator of Cydia has setup a new server which basically mimics Apple’s verification server and can save your older signature (SHSH blob) so that you can downgrade or restore back to the older firmware. This is important because if you don’t have your SHSH blob saved, and accidentally update to new firmware, you’ll loose your jailbreak and furthermore, you wont be able to downgrade back to older firmware to re-jailbreak your device."

The Dev Team warned us yesterday about the consequences and gave us simple directions on how to save our SHSH. There are 3 ways to do that:

If your iPhone is already jailbroken, you can save your SHSH on Saurik's server. If you're not jailbroken yet (ie. you have an iPad), you can use Firmware Umbrella to create a local copy of your SHSH blobs As an alternative to Firmware Umbrella, you can use autoSHSH

Note that saving or backing up your SHSH blobs is not vital or mandatory. It's just a safety step that will allow you to restore or downgrade should something go wrong in the future.

Spirit Jailbreak Release Delayed

I don't know if it's just a bad joke but Comex, the developer behing the userland jailbreak Spirit, just said on Twitter that he was delaying the release of this new jailbreak.

This decision came after Comex read a year old article about how quick Apple was at patching a security hole in firmware 3.0.

If true, this piece of news is a a huge let down. Everyone was really waiting for Spirit to be released. I fail to understand the logic behind this decision. Whatever date the jailbreak will be released, there will always be the risk of Apple patching the firmware at some point.

Cross your fingers! Maybe Comex is just playing with our nerves... How do you feel about that?

Spirit Jailbreak for iPhone,iPad and iPod Touch Coming Tomorrow

A few weeks ago I was telling you about Spirit, a new userland jailbreak by Comex that would supposedly jailbreak all iPhones and iPod Touch 3.1.3, no matter what model, as well as the iPad 3.1.2.

After a month of painful wait, the official realease date finally came from Comex himself. When someone asked him on Twitter when we could expect his Spirit jailbreak to be released, Comex said "Friday".

It is pretty unclear what Spirit will look like. It was originally believed to be a browser-based jailbreak like jailbreakme.com but Chpwn confirmed a few hours ago that Spirit doesn't work out of a browser. He also made it clear that Spirit will work for the latest firmware of the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

That is indeed good news for some of us who "accidentally" updated to 3.1.3 and got stuck without a jailbreak. It's important to note that Spirit is a jailbreak only. It will not unlock your iPhone! There is no word about a 3.1.3 iPhone unlock and if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath. I suspect we won't see a 3.1.3 unlock until iPhone OS 4 is released in a few weeks.

If you're going to be using Spirit for your iDevice, MuscleNerd recommended NOT to update iTunes to the latest 9.1.1 version. According to MuscleNerd, iTunes can detect Spirit and remove it, so make sure you stay away from this "update" button.

I just got my iPad and I was feeling really miserable without all my jailbreak apps. I'm glad I'm going to be able to take full advantage of this beautiful device as soon as I jailbreak it with Spirit.

What about you? Are you excited?

iPad Jailbreak Video

It didn't take too long for  the jailbreak community to come up with a jailbreak for the iPad. Last week I told you about Spirit, a jailbreak for iPhone 3.1.3, and today, MuscleNerd confirmed the iPad jailbreak using a variation of Spirit, originally developed by Comex.

Even better news is that this jailbreak can also be applied to every platform including the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3G, and potentially to the iPad 3G.

Credit goes where it's due. This iPad jailbreak is a cross-team effort by @chronicdevteam, @comex, @chpwn, and the Dev Team.

If you were on the fence about buying an iPad, this might just be the reason you were looking for.

There is no estimated release date for this jailbreak. My guess is that these smart hackers will wait for iPhone OS 3.2, so Apple doesn't patch the firmware and render this jailbreak useless.

How exciting!

Spirit – A New Jailbreak For iPhone 3.1.3

Just a few days after GeoHot released a video of a potential untethered jailbreak for 3.1.3, a new video by hacker Comex emerged on the internet showing a new userland jailbreak called Spirit.

UPDATE: Spirit has been released. You can see my Spirit jailbreak tutorial here.

A userland jailbreak is a browser-based jailbreak, similar to the good old JailbreakMe.com, which allows you to jailbreak your iPhone simply by visiting a site from Safari and agreeing to jailbreak your iPhone. If you used JailbreakMe.com before, you will probably remember how easy and quick it was. As for me, I remember going visit the Apple Store and jailbreak a bunch of iPhones on display for the heck of it...

Presumably, Spirit will work for every device on 3.1.3 with the newer bootrom, and potentially even the iPad. It's interesting to note that this is an untethered jailbreak.

For those of you that might be skeptical about this video, MuscleNerd confirmed that it is indeed a legit userland  jailbreak.

The question on everybody's lips is when will this new jailbreak be available? Well, there is no ETA at the time. Now that Geohot has been challenged though, I suspect that he's going to rush to release his new jailbreak, which in turn will kinda force Comex to release his too. Only time will tell.